White Supremacists Do the Funniest Things

Little Adolf Campbell is only three, but this birthday may be one he'll remember. That's because his parents decided to contact their local paper and sparked an online furor after their local ShopRite supermarket refused to fulfill their order for a birthday cake with the boy's full name – Adolf Hitler Campbell – inscribed on it.

ShopRite says that their policy prohibits inappropriate messages on cakes, and that this one was pretty clearly inappropriate. Adolf's parents refused the store's compromise offer to make them a cake with space on it to write their own message, and are bewailing a world in which their little boy cannot even have his own name on his birthday cake.

The Campbells, of Holland Township, New Jersey, were eventually able to get the cake they wanted at a nearby WalMart.

Enmeshed in this tempest in a teacup are some delicate civil rights questions. The deluge of comments which greeted the story's appearance included the inevitable ones wondering why on earth anyone would saddle their offspring with the name of history's most notorious genocidal maniac, but also others echoing the Campbells' dismay that the supermarket would penalize an innocent child because of his 'inappropriate' name. Both opinions have weight, but they run up against some strong and valid objections.

Adolf's father, Heath Campbell, is a paragon of disingenuousness. He cannot understand why people are so upset over the incident and thinks they should learn to be more tolerant. He says that he is proud of his German heritage and dubbed his son thus because he thought that it would be great for him to have a name that no one else would have. Apparently he has never heard of such distinguished and almost entirely uncontroversial Germans as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schopenhauer, Otto von Bismarck, Bertolt Brecht and Franz Beckenbauer, any of whose names would seem to serve the purpose just as well. The fact that Adolf's two sisters are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie also gives the lie to Mr Campbell's protestations of innocence.

There's an old semi-joke that giving a child an excessively odd or unusual name is a form of abuse. Lawmakers in some countries seem to agree: for instance, until 1993 in France parents had to choose from a government-approved list, and there have been recent moves in New Zealand to prevent the giving of egregiously bizarre or offensive names. In the United States, however, the Campbells' right to name their children whatever they wish is protected under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment and a weighty body of statute and case law, most pertinently the Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut.

The right of a child not to be abominably named is much vaguer . The United States is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (although President-elect Obama has promised to address this) and even if it were, many of its provisions are already encoded in various federal and state laws. Court decisions have tended to the paternalistic, deferring to parental authority for the most part unless – and sadly, sometimes even if – there is serious physical or mental harm to the child. There has been much judicial to-ing and fro-ing over whether children even enjoy 'full personhood' at all, with the correspondent protections that the Bill of Rights would give them. So, since Adolf's parents seem genuinely confident that he will not inevitably encounter psychological hell at the hands of his peers once he starts school, it will take a lot more than his birth certificate to constitute mistreatment in the eyes of the law.

That's all very well. What seems to have escaped the Campbells and their sympathizers is ShopRite's equally valid entitlement, as a private business, to determine its terms of customer service. This is a grayer legal area, largely thanks to the legacy of the segregation era, but as long as the supermarket is not discriminating arbitrarily on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin — which is prohibited by federal law — it can do more or less what it wants. It might be argued that the cake, as a private contract between ShopRite and the Campbells, would not actually have wounded or offended anyone (except possibly for poor Abe the pastry cook who had to make the damn thing), and that the only injured party here is young Adolf. But his parents need only have taken their business — since ShopRite did not want it — somewhere else, which is eventually what they did. And it emerges that the Campbells had placed, and been refused, essentially the same cake order on both of Adolf's previous two birthdays, which leads one to wonder why they didn't get the message sooner.

There seems to be no indication that the Campbells intend to pursue the matter further in the courts or anywhere else, so it is likely that this little incident will disappear to gather dust in the forgotten annals of the weird world, to be dug out whenever someone wants to make a point about the lunacy of parents or the insensitivity of big business. And indeed, it's hard to fathom exactly where they're coming from. Heath says he's not a racist; yet he believes the races should not mix; yet, he claims, there were several mixed-race children at Adolf's birthday party. His interpretation of the swastika — many examples of which adorn both his home and his body — as a symbol of peace and harmony does not jibe with his collection of Nazi memorabilia or his wearing of boots that he says belonged to a soldier in the Wehrmacht. Entitled as they are to do so, there won't be much sympathy in the world for parents who would name their child Adolf Hitler. Perhaps the Campbells know this, and are simply using their child to apply a veneer of acceptability to a depraved and discredited ideology.

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OK, first off, how badly was this guy rooting for a boy? He gave his girls terrible names, and probably kept trying to have children until a son came along, just so he could do the most interesting thing he’ll do in his whole life.

Secondly, I say, give the kid a cake. Give it an extra layer of frosting, and sparklers that spell out his name. Adolf is going to have a tough life – at least let him have some nice birthday memories.

Lisa Solod Warren

You gotta feel for this kid. Getting saddled with this kind of legacy is, in its way, as hard to get over, as any other kind of bizarre or horrible or neglectful or abusive parenting. I wish that kid and his sisters loads of luck and inner strength.

Cannonshop

Well, he’ll either learn to fight, or grow up to be an interior decorator.

Zedd

What these parents have done by naming their child this name is put themselves on notice. It’s like hanging a huge sign which says “I most apt to be abusive, keep an eye on me. My petty needs are far more important to me than those of my children. Insuring that my kids will have a good life isn’t so high on my priority list.”

I haven’t read up on this couple but, what I find interesting about these types of White Supremacists is that they are not typically the types of people that anyone would want to be like. They are not typically wealthy, clean, sexy, smart or attractive in any way. Why they feel superior is a huge mystery and rather thrilling because its so laughable. A lot of them live in some dump with a lot of rusting automobiles in front, tires strewed around for effect, scraggly, exhausted looking dogs, weeds everywhere and a strong stale cigarette, musky, moth bally and beer stench permeating for miles.

Whats really sad though is that this white supremacy thing is the only thing that makes them feel worthwhile. These are often people who are poor and not educated. People who feel powerless and totally discounted by those in power. Everyone wants to matter. This obsession with this doctrine is just a way to feel relevant. Sad really to live one’s life with such a skewed, sense of what ones purpose and significance is.

Clavos

I haven’t read up on this couple but, what I find interesting about these types of White Supremacists is that they are not typically the types of people that anyone would want to be like. They are not typically wealthy, clean, sexy, smart or attractive in any way. Why they feel superior is a huge mystery and rather thrilling because its so laughable. A lot of them live in some dump with a lot of rusting automobiles in front, tires strewed around for effect, scraggly, exhausted looking dogs, weeds everywhere and a strong stale cigarette, musky, moth bally and beer stench permeating for miles.

You know all this from direct, personal observation? Or are you merely passing on hearsay anecdotes?

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

I would disagree with Zedd. There’s only one common thread I’ve seen with white supremicists – they’re all right-wingers, every one.

Clavos

Profound…

http://www.futonreport.net/ Matthew T. Sussman

If there’s one issue I’ve supported throughout my years, it’s that racists need their own bakeries.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Glenn, you can redefine the right wing any way you like to include any despicable group you like, I suppose.

But the truth is that there is a lunatic fringe which is beyond the right wing and beyond the left wing and shares characteristics of both, but mostly exists within its own bizarre political dimension.

I mean, take a look at Lou Dobbs and the positions he holds. You’d probably call him a right-winger, but to most rational right leaning people he looks like some sort of extreme left-winger. The truth is that there’s another “wing” that’s not really right or left. It’s dark and extreme and full of fear and hate. They hate foreigners and certain minority groups and the ‘elites’ and the government and the media and believe in conspiracies. That’s where the Truthers and the White Supremacists and the Dominionists and the Timothy McVeigh’s of the world reside, and they’re not part of any of the normal ‘wings’ of politics.

Dave

zingzing

meh. what’s your bet, dave, that this guy votes republican? really, would you put any money against it?

still, you have a point. no one reasonable would assume that this guy is the “normal” anything. he’s a racist, through and through, although he has pointed out that it’s just his upbringing–not his son’s–that’s playing into this. he said, and this is not a quote, that he would not mind if his kids played with black or jewish kids, but he, himself, would not socialize with them.

so the guy is a jackass. and he made his son bear his jackassness. i wouldn’t say being a jackass is a particularly republican trait.

that said, …i’ll just let it end there.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Zing, I would almost guarantee that he doesn’t vote at all. That’s the pattern with these people. They feel that their votes are meaningless because the government is conspiring against them. He also probably thinks Bush is a race traitor and having an affair with Condi Rice, plus Bush is an elitist pawn of the Jewish conspiracy of the NWO and the Neocons and the CIA. So he certainly didn’t vote Republican in 2000 and 2004. For 2008 much the same would be suspected of McCain, plus he’s friends with arch-zionist Lieberman.

Dave

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

I really feel sorry for this idiot’s kids. He’s saddled them with names that will only earn them hatred from their friends – and the desire to learn early in life the answer to two questions:

1. How soon can I divorce my parents?
2. How soon can I change my name?

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

I would agree with Dave that this sort of extremism is beyond right or left. (Bereft? Would that be a good word?) Since Nazi was short for national socialism, I’ve always been mystified as to why they were considered ‘extreme right’. The only reasoning I can think of is that they let aristocrats play, whereas the communists typically liked to barbecue them.

And Zedd’s stereotype (despite Clav’s harsh response) is broadly correct. The Campbells certainly fit the mould, and it seems to me that most extremist movements, even if they are invented and directed by the intelligentsia, gain traction among the poor and disaffected.

Ruvy, you’ll be interested in the story from New Zealand which I linked to in the article. Your two questions seem to be exactly what the girl in that case got answers to.

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

The reason for the kid’s name should be obvious; He can live on “Settled out of court” comfortably for the rest of his life!

http://www.myspace.com/x15 Douglas Mays

Dreadful, good article! Once the kid gets to the world history part of his schooling, I think that him and his sisters will just outright kill Mr. Campbell. Why not? Make it a class project…

I saw this comedian on TV the other day. He had a one liner: “you know, the funny thing about Hitler…”

best,
DM

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Ah Douglas, so naive. What makes you think that world history as we know it will be part of his schooling? He’ll be home schooled and his lessons will explain how Hitler was a visionary who was destroyed by the zionist conspiracy.

Seriously, to answer your question, I live in Texas and I was born in SA. Yes, unfortunately, I know what I am talking about.

Irene wagner

Zedd, so true in many cases, but still, you’ve painted them with too broad a brush. White supremacy does not necessarily preclude an appreciation for the finer things in life. Adolf Hitler–the 20th century one–and his friends had art collections. The works weren’t schlock either. Art museums all over Europe are still trying to get them back. Hitler’s home was featured in the British equivalent of Better Homes and Gardens in the late 1930’s. There is some lovely Romantic waltz music so strongly identified with Nazism that it can’t be played in Israel without giving offense.

Margaret Sanger was well-educated, cultured, founder of the Planned Parenthood movement. She was also a eugenicist. The problem, as she saw it, wasn’t unwanted children; it was the kind of people who wanted them.

There are those who would sip Couvoissier (sp. sorry: I’m a PBR gal), and then–to thin the herd for a better tomorrow–trot over to Trailer Trash Town, shoot the “exhausted looking dogs” and the owners responsible for the “tires strewn about for effect” and they’d have no more compunction than they would after participating in a fox hunt. People, even the low class ones, created in the image of God? What a quaint idea. Richard Wurmbrand wrote of the brutality suffered by his prison mates at the hands of the philosophically and scientifically sophisticated.

Dr. D. I enjoyed this article, especially since it went beyond the “ain’t it awful?” reaction and included a discussion of the conflicts personal freedom and public sensibilities. You mention countries in which parents are legally required to select government-approved names for their children. A northern European country has “Hedda” on such a list, I believe. I’d give that one to my daughter, just so that I could move out of the country, change my family’s last name to Cabbage, then move back in.

http://www.myspace.com/x15 Douglas Mays

Dave (#16), yup, the home schooling trick. Hopefully the kids have cable TV to watch. They may stroll across the Hitler Channel.

DM

Zedd

Irene,

You are right White Supremacist ideology is even more entrenched in our society much deeper than you articulated. I’m not sure if I said anything about their appreciation of art or the “finer things”. Not sure what that has to do with anything. I personally see beauty in all things and believe the categorization of some art as finer than other types as a crock. A way for people to set themselves apart. My point was about education, class and economics. I think however you understand that I was highlighting the fact that most Neo-Nazis today would fall into what you may call the “white trash” category.

Not so sure if Hitler was to the manor born…. He was the son of a customs worker who upon his third marriage wed Hitlers mom (his niece), who he beat regularly along with his son Adolf and daughter (who were the only two kids to reach adulthood of six born to the mom). Hitler moved often and did poorly in school. Not an example of a family of the elites.

The point that I was trying to make is that everyone wants to matter and they will look to all sorts of things to seem more relevant than they feel they are.

When I first entered BC so many on this site held tight to the ridiculouls claims of The Bell Curve. So yes you are right, White Supremacy runs deep and is not just the sad fantacies of the poor and hopeless. But you’d agree that a lot who espouse those ideas and express them more overtly, come from meager beginings.

Zedd

Glenn,

I don’t think that this ideology has a Democratic or Republican root.

I do think that these guys may feel more at home in the Republican party (post Reagan) because of the opportunistic mischaracterization that took place about Blacks during the Reagan administration. Also Kennedy and Johnson’s role with civil rights didn’t help.

Zedd

Speaking about crazy supremacist notions, I always find it funny when Whites say “we”, speaking about the accomplishments of the West.

The chances of ones ancestor to have played a pivotal role in the advancement of European civilization are very slim (regardless of the assorted claims). It’s more likely that an individual’s ancestors were one of multitudes who cluttered the rat and disease infested streets of the illiterate or struggled as poor, toothless peasants in generations past and it is okay. It’s perfect. It is beautiful just as messy and uneducated and rough around the edges as it all is. The air of superiority is eye rolling. What is relevant is now, today, what you do with your life; how you use your mind and how you treat others. It matters that you do the best and the most with what is before you today. I can’t tisk tisk at a person in Darfur and claim some sort of superiority. It’s ridiculous. My great great great great grands would be ridiculous to finger wag at whomever would reside in whichever land that will be less developed at that time or visa-verse if America is the less developed during that time.

However in my case being a Zulu and all there is always an exception. You may rise.

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Zedd –

I don’t think white supremacists have Republican ‘roots’, but that they find much more common ground with Republicans than with Democrats, to wit:

little or no regulation of guns
against affirmative action
against unions
distrust or outright hatred of the government
belief that taxes are government-sponsored robbery
often (but not always) highly religious
distrust or outright hatred of non-‘Christian’ religions
hatred of legalized abortion

I mean, can you really imagine a scenario where an honest-to-evil white supremacist group would support the Democrats? I don’t think so.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Glenn, in my contacts with white supremacists I haven’t found them to necessarily be anti-union, anti-abortion or highly religious. A fair number of them are pro-union, populist, socialistic and secularist. I refer you to Lyndon Larouche and his followers for an example, and they definitely came out of roots in the Democratic party.

Dave

Zedd

Dave,

You are making my point. Yes, if they were not afflicted by this weird cultish obsession, they would be Democrats but they feel more at home in the Republican party because of the reasons that I stated above.

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Dave –

Point taken about Lyndon LaRouche. That means I was wrong about ALL white supremacist groups strongly leaning towards conservative values.

Frankly, though, I haven’t seen any other white supremacist group that supports unions, gay rights, et cetera – which doesn’t mean there aren’t any others, but they’re probably few and far between.

So I will reword my claim then that a great majority of white supremacist groups are on the far right, politically speaking.

Please note that I’m not saying ‘Republican’ and ‘Democrat’, because as I’ve pointed out several times the most powerful racist in America in my youth was a Democrat, and during Reconstruction the Democrats were the conservatives trying to block civil rights, and the Republicans were the liberals trying to end Jim Crow.

Zedd

Glenn,

I don’t think they are so ideologically sound. I would wager that there are a lot of skin heads on welfare.

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

Irene @ #18: LOL. ‘Hedda Cabbage’… I reckon the country you refer to must be Norway (think Ibsen).

Thanks for the critique. I don’t write much for BC in the way of articles (actually I write more than appears here, but I abandon most of it because it’s going nowhere – I’m my own worst critic), and it takes something like this story – which my wife found and pointed out to me – to pique my interest and get me thinking. In this instance, along the lines of ‘Well, I’m pretty sure these idiots are perfectly entitled to name their kid Adolf Hitler, but…’

And so is the store perfectly entitled not to make the cake. The law may be just, but it’s not necessarily fair.

http://www.myspace.com/x15 Douglas Mays

Zedd, “Skin Heads On Welfare” sounds would make a good title of a punk rock song I should work on in this snowed in afternoon.

Yeah, we have snow here. I’ll turn on the TV (with the sound off) to the Seahawks and Jets freezing their asses off downtown and start pounding on my guitar.

I remember back in Seattle proto-grunge days, a friend of mine (the Refuzors) recorded a song called ‘White Power’ (on Seattle Syndrome, Engram records). The song was about being falsly accussed of such a crime. The evidence presented in this article is not false.

anyway,
DM

Igor Marxomarxovich

Obama “vault birth certificate” can be seen on http://www.igormarxo.org. This looks alot more believable than the ones on the Obama or the “FactCheck sities. As Igor allude “Nonpolitical, impartial nonprofit” websites.

Of coude in Russia all race supreme

http://theugliestamerican.blogspot.com Andy Marsh

Do I know you Igor?

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

So I will reword my claim then that a great majority of white supremacist groups are on the far right, politically speaking.

I think you’re missing the point, which is that from the left they look right wing and from the right they look left wing, because they’re way out on the fringe which looks far away and opposed to every sane person’s beliefs.

Dave

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

From my vantage point on the left they just look like a bunch of knuckle-dragging morons.

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

…And, Zedd (I’ve pointed this out before but it bears repeating), the lovely Fred Phelps is a registered Democrat and has run for public office as such on numerous occasions.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

DD,

So many people keep forgetting that those lynch mobs in the South years ago were also good Democrats, all of them. When I was young with a real head hair, it was a real pleasure to be a Republican. I didn’t have to truck with the NYC Democratic machine, with the hot-shot “reform” Democrats – or the white trash who regularly voted Democrat in the South…..

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it. When it became apparent that the national Democratic Party was going to go the civil rights route, those good ol’ boys jumped ship without a second thought or a tear of regret. Never mind that the Republican Party stood, in general, for values that were anathema to them.

You can’t really say that any sort of extremist lunatics – be they white supremacists, anti-gay activists, Raiders fans, what have you – align with any particular political party ideologically.

Clavos

You can’t really say that any sort of extremist lunatics – be they white supremacists, anti-gay activists, Raiders fans, what have you – align with any particular political party ideologically.

Quoted for Truth.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Wouldn’t it have been nice if the Dixiecrats had followed through and developed into their own political party so that we had a three-party system today?

Dave

zingzing

dave: “Wouldn’t it have been nice if the Dixiecrats had followed through and developed into their own political party…”

do you want it to be more obvious? come on…

Brunelleschi

Some of you have lost view of reality.

The hate from the right takes many forms-skinheads, religious bigots, daytime talk radio, etc.

The hate from left groups? I don’t know. Someone find some hate coming from that side. I don’t see it.

I know about plenty of left movements, and I don’t know any, or any people in them, that are motivated by racial hatred.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Brunelleschi,

I know about plenty of left movements, and I don’t know any, or any people in them, that are motivated by racial hatred.

I am a syndicalist sociali$t and generally hung out with left-wing types when I got to college in 1968. I gradually started to notice that these left-wingers were always the first to condemn Israel and praise Arab terrorists as “freedom-fighters”. These were the same people who would call American soldiers in ‘Nam “baby-killers”, etc. and who reeked of pot, hash, LSD and other “recreational” substances that killed their brains, the same people who generally believed in fucking without consequences, “my body myself”, etc., etc.

I noticed that for all of their “steering committees” and talk of revolution and liberation, when it actually came time to fight the pigs – to actually go toe to toe with the cops who protected and served the rich upper-class of the United States – they ran away like the cowards they were and still are.

And then I discovered the Jewish Defense League. They did not drone on and on about liberation, they believed in responsible behavior, Jewish pride & love of Israel, and they took defeating the cops seriously. When the JDL did a demo, cops ALSO went to the hospital. They didn’t run away, they weren’t cowards, and they weren’t bullies. When the “black power” types acted like gorillas at school board meetings, it was the JDL that taught them to behave like people and not animals. When the Puerto Ricans did the same, again, it was the JDL that made the Puerto Ricans behave. And they played by the Puerto Ricans rules and kicked their asses. Because they displayed balls and guts, the blacks, who didn’t like having their asses kicked by Jews at all, screamed “racism”! and so did the Puerto Ricans.

Poor fuckers.

But whites, who had been beating the shit out of Jews for years just for the fun of it, noticed, paid attention and would say, “it’s about time!”

The rich assimilated Jews shuddered. They had no balls, and still don’t. They were scared shitless of the JDL because the JDL represented us not so rich Jews who had only contempt for the assimilationist bastards who ruined American Jewry.

But to make a long story short, there was plenty of Jew-hatred on the left in America, and there still is. NOTICE I DID NOT SAY ANTI-SEMITISM. I SAID JEW-HATRED. So, when the American economy goes further into the toilet, and it will, you can be sure that leftists of all sorts in the United States will be coming out and blaming Jews. Jeremiah Wright and Louie Farrakhan are doing it already, and they will be followed by scores of other “opinion-makers” in the United States. And you know what the funny thing will be?

YOU and people like you, will bleat like sheep, “there is no anti-Semitism” in the United States!”

Is Jew-hatred racism? I don’t know and I don’t give a fuck. I only know that it costs Jews their lives, and the only answer to it is a loaded and cocked gun in the hands of a Jew ready to kill those who hate him.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

By the way, if you want to see just how tolerant the “new left” really is, read the first two paragraphs of Mark Edward Manning’s article….

If you want some real insight into how much gays and liberals respect the concept of tolerance, which they’re always preaching about, you need look no further than the latest “controversy” surrounding our President-elect.

Gay-rights advocates, the homosexual community and most liberals are in a huff over Mr. Obama’s decision to allow California pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his presidential inauguration. Warren is an outspoken advocate not only of pro-life issues but also of traditional marriage.

I know at least one right wing academic run off campus by these infantile fools, who have not only smeared the name “liberal” with their illiberal mentality of authoritarian oppression, but who have also managed to kill off academic freedom in many parts of the world, including the United States and Israel.

Remember, I’m a sociali$t, not some damned liberal, and certainly not a conservative.

http://www.savoheleta.com Savo Heleta

WalMart will do anything for money

Baronius

When the culture is racist, it’s in the racists’ best interest to support big government. That’s when you can pass segregation laws, restrictions on voting rights, et cetera. When society becomes opposed to racism, suddenly the racists oppose government action. Power seems okay when it’s used to separate black and white students, but when it integrates black and white students, it’s an abuse of force.

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

Brunelleschi:

What exactly is it about neo-Nazi skinheads, religious fundamentalists etc – other than conventional labeling – which causes you to place them on the right of the political spectrum?

Zedd

Doc,

Dems in this country are thought to be the greater proponents of civil rights. They in the past 40yrs have taken the lead in significant matters with a lot of the Rep leadership kicking and screaming (loudly) the entire way. No one ever wants to say it loudly but part of the reason that the south went Rep is because of desegregation. They thought it was darn right unAmerican to be forced to fraternize with Niggarz (plainly stated). While many are actually left leaning in their ideology (lets help one another get there, etc.), the race matter is just too much to cope with.

Regan voiced a lot of their thoughts when he threw good people who happened to be Black under the bus, for his political gain. Off course the self fulfilling prophesy became a reality and we have “the hood” instead of the neighborhoods of my youth. – I think I veerd off a tad, on a short soap box.

Speaking about soap boxes, I remember just how thrilled my Dad was when we went to speakers corner as a kid. Coming from oppressive SA, he was gaga at the nerve of what was being said. For me the person who stood out the most was a guy (who in retrospect was gay, although I had no clue then) who got into a heated argument with some burly Irish sounding man (I guess about gay rights). He kept saying “d..o..n’t j..u..dge”, in a really stereotypical “gay leisurely tone”, with a hand on his hip and a Rupaul finger wagging. I loved how he stood up for himself because to me as a kid he looked like a sure under dog. We still say “d…o..n’t j..u….dge” in my family. Yes I’m off topic.

Brunelleschi

Ruvy-

I think I spent enough time knee-deep in the real left in my college days to have sensed a Jew-hating trend. It’s nonsense.

If such a trend exists, what is the reference? Who are they, how do they think, where can you find their opinions? What is their anti-jew theory and who developed it?

These things are easy to find for the KKK, Aryan Nation, etc. Hate won’t sell unless you run your mouth. I don’t see or hear them on the left, and I don’t think you do either or they would have left evidence.

What I do remember from my most active days is all the left organizers I knew would lead off on opposing racism and keeping that a high priority-regardless of what their faction was all about (no nukes, apartheid, Central America, etc), because so many factions have worked it into their thinking and agenda. One organizer told me “If it weren’t for Jews, we wouldn’t even have a left in this country (USA).”

Left organizers have all known since the 60s that hate and racism don’t work. For people to accuse them of the same thing requires a pretty strong case and there just are none to show.

Brunelleschi

Ruvy, 2:

Jeremiah Wright and Louie Farrakhan are religious leaders, not politicians. They don’t speak for the left.

They may be kooks, and they may be left, but they are not leaders of the left nor do they set the left’s agenda.

Brunelleschi

Brunelleschi’s Principal – “The magnitude of a problem is proportional to the number of google hits you find on it.”

The hate from left groups? I don’t know. Someone find some hate coming from that side. I don’t see it.

Hatred for the right.

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

Brunelleschi’s Principal says we have a problem here…..

Fine, but enough about your head teacher. What about your principles?

[Sorry, Clav – beat ya to it!]

Zedd

Oh no. We’ve got another one. And I used to like him… sigh.

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

Next thing you know, Zedd, I’ll be selling used boats…

Zedd

And kissing up to Dave and fawning over STM for some bizarre reason.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Brunelleschi,

I googled up “left wing anti-Semitism” just to see what I would get. I got 263,000 results. I copied the first page as a comment and Aksimet said it was spam. So this comment will have to do in its place.

Do as I did and you should get similar results. Then brew yourself up a coffee and start to read. Even if 80% of the quarter million references Google found are bilge, that still leaves plenty to prove my assertions.

Have fun, boychick.

Brunelleschi

Ruvy-

Leave the quotes on each end to narrow it to a phrase, or else you get a lot of extra junk that has the words in other contexts. I did the google you suggested that way and got less than 4,000.

Then I looked around for an anti-Jewish trend coming from the left and don’t see it to be honest.

The left obviously has problems with what Israel DOES, but this does not equal being against the people, or Jews living anywhere, based on their genetics. I spent plenty of time in the left and never met anyone who looked at it that way. In contrast, white racial hate groups in the US typically state that the people they oppose are inferior. Those people are just not present in the left.

In fact, in one left group I was in, a co-chair was a Jewish woman. How can you select a person to lead if you hate their genes?

You are confusing things. You are confusing political disagreement with racism.

Those people I found in that google search are just as confused.

Brunelleschi

BTW- I didn’t do the morning read with a coffee. I could have made a cappuccino but instead I had a “Monster Energy Low Carb (R).”

More spam.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Then I looked around for an anti-Jewish trend coming from the left and don’t see it to be honest.

Then you’re blind and deaf. Putting aside Ruvy’s claims which center more around anti-zionism than anti-semitism, and they’re not the same thing, there has always been an anti-jewish element on the American left, particularly coming from African Americans. Stokely Carmichael was radically anti-jew. Louis Farrakhan is outspokenly anti-semitic. And who can forget Jesse Jackson’s ‘hymietown’ comment, or all the blacks on the left who promoted the idea that jews were behind the 9/11 attack, or the idea that jews created AIDS to kill black babies and ran the slave trade.

Our obsessive friends at the ADL did a study and came up with the result that while 9% of the general population in the US is strongly anti-semitis, the percentage of strongly anti-semitic African Americans is 34%.

Dave

Brunelleschi

Dave-

Strong words, from someone who needs a clue!

As a defense, you are referencing 2 black religious leaders, not politicians. Judaism is there competition. S Carmichael was from the 60s!

Get with reality. Racism is part of the right. It’s not what the left is all about.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Brunelleschi,

Let’s make this simple for you. Hamas, FataH and HizbAllah want to kill Jews. They may be “against Israel” – but they want to kill Jews. The proof of the pudding came in Mumbai – where Jews were targeted for death and torture. The “new left” backs these assholes. It matters little to me what their motives are. They want me dead. They want my family dead. And it doesn’t matter where we live or what we really believe. The “new left” allows some other agent to act for it – but they back that agent. So, by their backing people who would murder me, they want me dead. People who want me dead eventually will come into my gunsights – and if G-d gives me strength to do so, I’ll kill them.

Occasionally, some stupid westerner gets herself directly involved in this – and dies. And deserves to. Rachel Corrie is a perfect example of this. This spoiled mall rat from Washington truly hated America – and was brainwashed to hate Israel as well. And she did something very stupid. She got directly in the way of a bulldozer. Her stupidity killed her.

Did she hate Jews? Maybe – I honestly do not know. But she directly backed people who did and got used by them – and died. As a father, I put the blame on her parents for not teaching their daughter – their shot into the future – right from wrong and good from evil. She started by burning American flags, probably progressed to Israeli (Jewish) flags, and finally went to be a useful idiot for the Islamic Students Movement. Thus she died.

AS A FATHER, I never taught my sons such stupidity. I never taught them to burn an American flag, nor an Arab flag, nor to hate Arabs. I always have taught my sons that the day would come when there would be reconciliation between Arab and Jew, no matter how matters appeared today.

I see her parents and what they do today, and it disgusts me. The stupidity of the daughter has infected the parents! What a pathetic culture wherein a father and mother cannot see right from wrong, but only the loss of their perfect little girl!

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

So, to both respond to the least prejudiced of your remarks and somewhat follow you down your own personal little rabbit hole to Wonderland, you’re saying the people who perpetrated the attack on Mumbai were members of Fatah, Hamas or Hizbollah?

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Noooo…..

Thee are a whole slew of Wahhabi-influenced wünderkinder who want Jews dead. What I said is that if the “new left” pricks support people who kill Jews, then by extension, they want the same thing….

You can crawl out of the hole in your reasoning by yourself. Ask Brunelleschi for a shovel if you need help. I’m sure he’ll oblige….

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

So please either explain or withdraw the following direct quote, as it has me confused.

“Hamas, FataH and HizbAllah want to kill Jews. They may be “against Israel” – but they want to kill Jews. The proof of the pudding came in Mumbai – where Jews were targeted for death and torture.”

You appear to be saying that the Mumbai attacks are proof that the aforementioned groups want to kill Jews…

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Noooo…..

It’s just a tad unclear – so we’ll make it clear for you. “Hamas, FataH and HizbAllah want to kill Jews. They may be ‘against Israel’ – but they want to kill Jews.” That stands. There are a whole pack of terrorists who have been smoking the same crack pipe of hatred as the Wahhabi-influenced above named assholes, and who ape them. They killed Jews just as effectively, and targeted them – because they were Jews. In other words, they are part of the same pile of shit who are so passionately backed by the “new leftist” assholes I only have contempt for.

Put just a little differently, they have the same hatred the so-called “anti-Zionists” have targeted the same people – and when you look at the new left writers – like Global Research (which I will quote on other occasions, because they are right) – have the same backers.

There is plenty of hatred of Jews on the new left – disguised as opposition to Israel. And before Bruneschelli starts to even type – there are plenty of self-hating Jews on the new left too.

To repeat. I don’t give a rat’s ass is if this is “racism” or not. It endangers my people, and the only appropriate response is a cocked and loaded gun to wipe the contaminants off the planet – just like Matatyahu Hashmonai ran a spear through a Jew willing to worship an idol and sacrifice a pig to it.

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

Brunelleschi (and Dave),

Jesse Jackson has run for president at least twice to my recollection, so I think it’s safe to say he can be considered a politician as well as a religious leader.

I don’t know about Farrakhan being on the left though. He’s one of those nutcases we’ve been arguing about who is so far shifted along the political spectrum as to make it irrelevant which end of it he’s supposedly on. Sure he’s been paranoically critical of Bush and backed Obama in the recent election, but I’m sure that if Obama’s policies or decisions collide with Farrakhan’s agenda the new president will be in for much of the same sort of bullshit.

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

So in plain words, what you wrote was wrong. I don’t think you have enough character to man up and admit it, so we’ll just imagine you apologised.

As to your “solution”, even if what you propose was the official policy of all Israel, which, happily, it isn’t, you still don’t have the firepower to pull off such a thing, so your preferred solution, total genocide, is, like most other things you suggest, entirely impossible and utterly pointless.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

I’m not wrong, Chris. I clarified a point. There is a difference. When your mind is clearer and you can pay attention to that difference, get back to me….

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

And I wrote, “People who want me dead eventually will come into my gunsights – and if G-d gives me strength to do so, I’ll kill them.” That is not genocide.

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Ruvy –

I do appreciate how you point out that the Islamics whom you oppose are not the majority, but those who belong to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other such groups whether they are Wahhabi-influenced are allied with Shi’a extremists, because history shows that as a whole, those who follow Islam are more peaceful than those who follow mainstream ‘Christianity’.

On Rachel Corrie, I agree that she was not properly prepared for adulthood by her parents, and that she was cruelly used by those who hate Israel, but I do take exception to your judgment of her parents unless you yourself have suffered the loss of a child.

I haven’t, and I pray every single day that my sons will outlive me. I do know that if something were about to happen to one of them, well, right and wrong would no longer matter at that point, and I’m not sure of right and wrong would ever matter again.

So please do not judge them. Pity them instead with great pity, for I suspect that after one loses a child, objectivity and a meaning for one’s life are not so easy to regain….

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Glenn,

Thank you for your kind words.

I’m sorry if I seem a bit cold (I am, literally, more than a bit cold, but that is a different matter. We did lose an infant – not a child – and it is not the same thing. Not by a long shot. But I have an obligation to my sons to teach them right from wrong. I have done my level best to fulfill that obligation, and truth be told, I see the fruit of that effort. So far, I appear to have succeeded. I’m not bragging or patting myself on the back – one never knows what harsh tests tomorrow will bring.

I would pity the Corries. Except that by their actions they endanger every Jew who lives in Israel – and I do mean every Jew. In their grief, they have chosen to support a false morality and a false set of values that can only mean death for the Jewish population of Israel – as well as death for Jews elsewhere targeted by terrorists, as occurred in Mumbai or Buenos Aires a number of years back, as well as Seattle.

So, while I can feel for the Corries as human beings and as parents who have lost a daughter, I must view my protection from their evil influence as more important. One of the cardinal tenets of Judaism is that “you shall LIVE by the commandments”. I cannot carry out commandments or good deeds if I am dead, and neither can any other Jew. And the commandment “not to turn away from the blood of your brother” is just as important as keeping Shabbat, or keeping kosher, or not stealing or coveting another man’s wife.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

People who want me dead eventually will come into my gunsights – and if G-d gives me strength to do so, I’ll kill them.

Including Iranians with long range missiles with WMD warheads and their leaders? If only the world were really that simple.

Dave

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

No, Ruvy, you are just trying to weasel out of it. What you wrote and I directly quoted is utterly false. Thanks for displaying the depth of dishonesty that underpins your corrupt ideology, at least we all know where we stand with you.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

I can’t believe I’m defending Ruvy and his paranoia, but Chris has it wrong here. From Ruvy’s point of view there is no meaningful distinction to be drawn between Hezbollah, Hamas, the Iranians, al Qaeda, the terrorists in Mumbai or the Wahabbis. They all share the same basic philosophy and one of the cornerstones of their shared culture of belief is hostility towards jews in general and Israel in specific. Ruvy is correct to point the finger of blame not at the individual groups, but rather at the culture of hate and violence which they have in common and which produced them.

As for the left hating jews, that’s not an exclusive trait of the ‘new left’ though it is certainly quite apparent there. Remember that the Soviets carried out pogroms against jews in Russia, so the marxist left has a long history of anti-semitism.

Dave

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Including Iranians with long range missiles with WMD warheads and their leaders? If only the world were really that simple.

No, Dave. I was not enunciating some grand policy statement for a country I do not rule, as Chris would make out I am. I was being very literal, disgustingly so. When the bastards I refer to come within my gunsights, from where I am in Ma’ale Levona, I’ll kill them. That is all I can do. But it is the least I can do.

I do not have any magic weapons that will reach to Teheran. Unfortunately, as you say, the world is not that simple. All I have to guide me is my faith in the Almighty. All else must be the fruit of my own efforts.

Thanks for getting my point and making that point clearer – as much as it must have stuck in your throat to do so. Chris Rose thinks he is so clever to play bar-room games of “gotcha” on the comment list he is supposed to monitor.

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Dave, I know very well what Ruvy’s views are, as I have had the misfortune to read his hate-filled, self-serving views every single time he has posted them here.

However, that does not mean that I am going to allow him to make blatantly false remarks unchallenged, just as I repel all such lies.

He didn’t say that the attacks on Mumbai were by part of a Wahabbi inspired group, he said that “Hamas, FataH and HizbAllah want to kill Jews” and that the “The proof of the pudding came in Mumbai”, which is simply false.

It doesn’t matter that he sees everybody opposed to certain Israelis’ attempts to colonise other people’s territory as part of the same group or not. Not seeing any meaningful distinction is simply another part of the strategy of not engaging with any of these people, which is a large part of the problem in the first place.

Sooner or later, Israel is going to have to find a way to negotiate a way to co-exist with its neighbours and the longer hysterical extremists like him are involved in the process, the longer it will take.

It seems to me to be a simple fact that if Israel genuinely wanted peace, it could have either negotiated it or simply imposed it a long time ago. Instead it has persisted in trying to control as much territory, and water resources, as possible, a strategy guaranteed to inflame the region.

Furthermore, it is deliberately keeping the people who live in Gaza in the most appalling conditions by aggressively controlling the flow of basic necessities, such as fuel and food, into Gaza, even to the extent of blockading the Gazan coast, which is pretty much an act of war or terrorism in its own right.

The end result of all this has been the rise of extremism and terrorism across a wide part of the Muslim world, which has left the world in this terrible situation. It follows therefore that it is Israel that is directly responsible for the dire situation we all find ourselves in.

It is not wrong to resist or even hate, the cause of such poison, which is Israel, not a movement that has gained almost all of its strength by opposing Israel.

Furthermore, it is the extremist religious philosophy espoused by the likes of Ruvy, that is directly feeding the rise of Muslim extremism and terrorism throughout the world, not Islam itself.

The only solution is for a directly negotiated settlement, and every time there is yet another act of terrorism by either side simply makes that solution be further delayed, which seems to imply that Ruvy and his ilk have a vested interest in Muslim terrorism and behaving in such a way as to encourage it. Hardly a recipe for peace is it?

Let’s also not forget that Ruvy so hates many of his own people that on more than one occasion he has written right here on Blogcritics how he would approve of an Iranian nuclear strike on Tel Aviv.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Comment #75 is the typical one-sided view of the world of the typical average Brit who buys the bullshit his media feed him.

Attempting to even explain reality to such a person is akin to casting pearls before swine.

Havál ‘al hazmán, Havál ‘al hakésef
A waste of time – a waste of money.

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

And once again we see a total failure to engage with the issues on the part of our pet neo-Israeli fanatic.

The feeble and really rather pathetic attempt to attack me based on my nationality is as wrongheaded as the presumption as to my sources of information, of which you know exactly nothing.

As you have such a poor grasp of reality, given that most of your information seems to be 5 or 6 thousand years out of date, your rejection of “attempting to explain reality” comes as no surprise.

Any chance you’ll be rejecting your support for nuking Tel Aviv?

Maybe trying to find ways to build peace in the Middle East, rather than the genocide you currently prefer? I suspect not…

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

OK Chris,

Let’s get a few things straight. There is no need to build “peace” in the Middle East. There may be a need for Americans, and perhaps for Brits – since both of your nations fomented war in the region.

THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM.

But there is no need for us in Israel to seek peace from those who dance in the streets when we die.

We in Israel need to see to it that our entity will survive. That means putting the fear of the G-d of Israel into the Arabs who would murder us off. That means reducing or eliminating the evil influence of nations that foment war in the region – nations like the United States, Britain, the EU, and Russia.

If that means starving the inhabitants of Gaza till they kill off the terrorists there, so be it. If that means castrating a couple of sons of local sheikhs so that they get the idea that allowing terrorists to operate freely in Judea and Samaria is not wise, so be it. If that means killing off every last PLO and Hamasnik, and executing all the terrorists in our jails, so be it.

If in the end, it means that we have to destroy the Aswan High Dam and kill off fifty million Egyptians, so be it. If that means fighting Americans, Russians or Europeans, so be it. The holy soil of the Land of Israel must not be handed over to the foreigner without a fight to the finish. The G-d of Israel demands nothing less of the Children of Israel.

These are existential issues. And on existential issues, there can be no compromise. From my own point of view, our rights to the land of Israel arise in the Torah, and the corresponding verses in the Qur’an. For me that’s good enough.

However for those of you (and for those Jews) who give neither wisdom work any validity or recognition, our rights to sovereignty total over all of the Land of Israel arise out the Resolutions on Palestine reached at San Remo on 24-25 1920. These resolutions were reached by those powers which defeated the Ottoman Empire in 1917, and reached by their rights as victors who had stripped said empire of its territories in the Near East. The folowing assetions can be found in the book, “The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law”, by Howard Grief (Mazo Publishers, 2008)

They invest in perpetuity in the Jewish People or its assigns total sovereignty over the territory they called Palestine – the territory that is the Land of Israel.

This territory extends through all of the State of Israel, Judea and Samaria, the Kingdom of Jordan, the Golan Heights and all of southern Lebanon up to the bend in the Litani River.

We are presently estopped by the treaty of peace the idiots in Jerusalem signed with Jordan from laying claim to that territory. But the rest is all ours by right – rights that the British abused and usurped when they ran the Mandate for Palestine here, and that the truly stupid (as well as anti-Torah) government in Jerusalem has nearly given up.

BECAUSE ALL OF THIS LAND IS OUR SOVEREIGN TERRITORY, the Geneva Convention does not apply to it at all, in spite of the erroneous conclusions of Meir Shamgar in 1967-8. Any presence of the United Nations on our sovereign territory is illegal. Any presence of any foreign soldiers on our territory is illegal.

The issue for us is not peace with the Arabs – the issue is making sure that a secure Jewish Entity exists here forever, so that never must a Jew flee Germany or France or England because the regime (or some damned mob) there might kill him. The Arabs have 99% of the Middle East to rule. Here, they can live as a minority. Yes, it’s onerous, but given that they have 99% of the Middle East, those Arabs living here can deal with it. If they can’t and go to war, it is our duty to destroy them.

But before we even approach that issue, we must make sure that Jews world wide understand these facts, and this approach. That is the first problem. The Arabs and all others, and all the bullshit they spew can come later.

And now, it is nearly the Sabbath, and I must leave these arguments till later.

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Well, the only thing you have shown is that you are a very sick person Ruvy. There is clearly no point in trying to communicate to you as you are such a deranged extremist that only compulsory re-education and genocide, even of some of your own people, will satisfy you.

There are so many idiocies in your point of view that it becomes impossible to rebut them all. I will, therefore, confine myself to pointing out that Israel’s infrastructure can barely support its current population of 7 million, so it has not much prospect of supporting the total global Jewish population, which is at least twice that. It does reveal why you are so bat crazy about getting your hands on as much land as possible though…

I hope your Sabbath experience will lead you to retracting your statements in support of nuking Tel Aviv though…

Brunelleschi

Dr Dread-

Jesse Jackson is a career religious leader that ran a couple of times and lost. That doesn’t mean he is “part” of the left. His words and attitude about Jews are religious, not political. He’s barely a zit on the left’s ass.

No one has found a single left political organization in the US that works off racial hatred. None. Zero. They don’t exist, but they are plentiful on the right.

http://blogcritics.org/writer/dan_miller Dan(Miller)

Brunelleschi,

I wasn’t aware of a bright line between religion and politics. To the contrary, and unfortunate though it may, it strikes me that religious views often take on political aspects, and that political views often take on religious aspects. The left and the right both pander to their religious constituents, and religious groups seem equally to pander to politicians holding views with which they are comfortable. This seems to be even more the case when one considers secular religions.

Dan(Miller)

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Chris, I have to say that while your rhetoric is not as over-the-top, you sound just as irrational and hate-filled as Ruvy.

Repeatedly referring to Israel as ‘poison’ isn’t exactly raising the level or quality of the discussion.

Israel may need to make some concessions and behave more reasonably, but they are hardly the sole guilty parties in this situation as you seem to want to suggest. There’s plenty of blame to go around.

Dave

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Dave, I have to say that you are making stuff up. I used the word poison once, not repeatedly, and I am neither irrational or hate-filled.

As, not for the first time, you appear to be somewhat comprehension challenged, here is what I actually wrote:-

[Israel] is deliberately keeping the people who live in Gaza in the most appalling conditions by aggressively controlling the flow of basic necessities, such as fuel and food, into Gaza, even to the extent of blockading the Gazan coast, which is pretty much an act of war or terrorism in its own right.

The end result of all this has been the rise of extremism and terrorism across a wide part of the Muslim world, which has left the world in this terrible situation. It follows therefore that it is Israel that is directly responsible for the dire situation we all find ourselves in.

It is not wrong to resist or even hate, the cause of such poison, which is Israel, not a movement that has gained almost all of its strength by opposing Israel.”

Perhaps you could use a tiny part of your vast intellect to let me know exactly what is wrong with that?

I also haven’t said, nor do I think, that Israel is the only guilty party. I do however think they have a greater degree of culpability and responsibility for events on the ground.

Thanks for stopping by with your entirely inaccurate and untrue comment, it has really contributed usefully to the debate.

Brunelleschi

Dan-

The overlap between politics and religion is obvious to all. You don’t need to say what we all know already.

But, they are not the same thing. People like Jackson are religious leaders who have exploited politics. That does not mean his religion or attitudes about religious rivals are part of the political machinery he contacts. Just admit it, I’m right. People are getting politics and religion confused here.

The more they overlap, the worse it gets. The right has done a poor job of keeping the line clear. In fact, the right NEEDS religious kooks, or it would be gone already. The left would do just fine without any of them.

Cindy D

Christopher,

It is not wrong to resist or even hate, the cause of such poison…

I’m telling you. You are true Anarchist material.

Brunelleschi

Dave-

“….Israel may need to make some concessions and behave more reasonably…” -Dave N

Now there is an understatement!

It will never change. Just read the hate spewing from Ruvy and multiply it by a few million. America has NO business taking sides in that fight. It’s the oldest and ugliest divorce in human history.

The chances of Israel ever “getting it” are basically zero. America should cut off the funds and let it fall, and get that mistake behind us.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Chris,

You have displayed admirably in your asinine comments above why attempting to engage you at all is akin to casting pearls before swine.

Nevertheless, you make one valid point. It is true that I said in a comment that if the Iranians nuked Tel Aviv, there would be no terrible loss. While I’m entitled to that opinion, to write it openly where you can read it constitutes sin’át Hinám – needless hatred. This is the same sin of incitement to death I have accused the secular élite in Tel Aviv of, and unless I am willing to retract that statement, I deserve the same Divine punishment as the scum that forms the secular élite deserve, and for the same reasons.

So, I am retracting it here.

Now, in all truth, I do not expect you to comprehend what I’ve written or why; nor do I expect that retraction to accomplish anything with respect to people. There is no forgiving or forgetting on the internet and only G-d, in His Wisdom, can choose to ignore the willful sin of a person.

I don’t expect you to comprehend that either. Your mind is too poisoned. But some reading this might understand what I’ve written.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Brunelleschi,

The chances of Israel ever “getting it” are basically zero. America should cut off the funds and let it fall, and get that mistake behind us.

For all the time that I’ve commented here, I have been very consistent in one message. Since it has been the consistent policy of the United States government to undermine the Jewish Entity here, the less involvement that Entity has with your country the better.

We do not need your military aid; we do not need your soldiers; we do not need your arms; we do not need your money. We certainly do not need your damned arrogant interference in our affairs and your corrupting our governing system here! My basic message to any American is take it all and GET THE FUCK OUT!!

Your tourism dollars are welcome – if you have any….

taxpayer

“we do not need your money”

Great!

When do the $200 Billion in loans get paid back?

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Perhaps you could use a tiny part of your vast intellect to let me know exactly what is wrong with that?

To me the problem appears to be that you are targeting the existence of Israel more than the policies of its government as the problem. I’m sure that’s not what you meant, but it’s certainly the impression which you create.

I also haven’t said, nor do I think, that Israel is the only guilty party. I do however think they have a greater degree of culpability and responsibility for events on the ground.

So you pick between murderers and side with the ones you find more politically correct?

Thanks for stopping by with your entirely inaccurate and untrue comment, it has really contributed usefully to the debate.

My pleasure. Next time I’ll make some simplistic and absolutist statements so that I can fit in better with you and Ruvy.

Sorry about the mistake on ‘poison’ – turns out you were just one of several people using the term and I thought it was all you because of your undisguised and virulent hatred of Israel.

Dave

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

No one has found a single left political organization in the US that works off racial hatred. None. Zero. They don’t exist, but they are plentiful on the right.

Really? Name one.

Dave

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Ruvy, you have displayed admirably in your asinine comments above why attempting to engage you at all is akin to casting pearls before swine.

In particular, you are simply ignoring my point of view or insulting me, as opposed to taking my perspective seriously. As this is the same arrogance that leads you to be dismissive of everybody else with a stake in the future of the Middle East, it comes as no surprise.

What does come as a surprise is you displaying the courage and integrity to retract your remarks with regard to Tel Aviv, although you actually said more than just “if the Iranians nuked Tel Aviv, there would be no terrible loss.”

However, let’s focus on your achievement in actually getting that far; well done.

As to your familiar rant to Brunelleschi, who was actually calling for the same thing as you regularly do, I actually wish the West would stop supporting Israel too. At least that way the ludicrous fantasy that you appear to subscribe to, of total Israeli self-sufficiency, would be exposed for the utter hogwash it is. Of course, it would probably lead to the complete destruction of the Israeli state too, which would be ironic. I’m pretty confident that it will never come to pass though.

I wasn’t targeting the existence of Israel at all, Dave. What exactly did I say that gave you that impression?

Nor am I picking between murderers and political correctness is simply irrelevant. With power comes responsibility and Israel has the greater power, end of story.

I love the way you seem so proud of your miscomprehension and general all round superficiality of understanding though. It’s really nice of you to let our readers see that.

As to poison, you appear to be doubly mistaken. I was the first person to use the word on this page, so you can not possibly have seen here that “you were just one of several people using the term”.

In fact, it just means that you have once again been caught in making stuff up, to be charitable and assume you are not deliberately telling lies.

Similarly you have made up this entirely inaccurate opinion you attribute to me “your undisguised and virulent hatred of Israel”, which is not remotely how I feel. I’m sure a person of your boundless integrity will either substantiate that baseless characterisation or withdraw it.

The comical part is that I had now part of the previous conversation(s) I must be slipping… either that or just getting old.

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

Excuse me “no part”

Cindy D

Ruvy,

It’s Trillion by now isn’t it?

Cindy D

ooops Ruvy, nevermind I was confused about the author. what i said doesn’t make any sense. i was thinking of the deficit.

taxpayer

“The check’s in the mail. Bernie Madoff mailed it two weeks ago.”

You want to rely on Madoff to pay your obligations?

That makes what you say and Madoff both bankrupt.

Leslie Bohn

It’s a typical Nalle delusion that he actually believes that he speaks for thousands of readers, most of whom can actually tell the difference between the rantings of an unhinged, fervently murderous religious lunatic and the pointing out of such.

We also can tell when someone tries to argue a point using intellectual honesty, reason, and logic. For instance, someone makes an assertion (from CRose #75: “I do however think [Isreal] have a greater degree of culpability and responsibility for events on the ground.”) after listing his reasons (graffs #6-9, which note specific policies and actions).

The brainless, fundamentally dishonest response:
“So you pick between murderers and side with the ones you find more politically correct?”

It s just amazing that whenever I leaf through the politics section of this site, I find that the most obviously spun, stupid, manipulative shit on here is so often the work of Dave “Sox Pupuli” Nalle or one of his various aliases. An actual “editor” of the place.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

You want to rely on Madoff to pay your obligations?

I wouldn’t rely on big-ego, big-checkbook Jews like Madoff for anything. And the State of Israel is morally bankrupt and will collapse of its own incompetence. At least, thank G-d, the pilots haven’t been entirely brainwashed by the leftist shits ruining Israel. They got a couple of hundred terrorists today in attacks on Gaza – so unlike what the terrorists themselves did in Netivot – killing a civilian.

I leave you to contemplate why the article is there and not here at Blogcritics, where I would have preferred it to be….

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

I had intended to just sit in my easy chair enjoying some post-holiday relaxation and drop in to make a couple of glib comments and point out the hypocrisy of both sides in this argument, but then Chris and Leslie – as usual – have to resort to personal attacks, forcing me to stop watching Pokemon with my daughter and actually make a substantive comment.

I’ll address Chris here, since Leslie follows his/her usual pattern of nothing but condescension, insults and in this case a bit of free toadying to Chris.

First off, it is a given that Ruvy is bellicose, fanatical and deluded. There’s not much sense in addressing his points. But I think that Chris is laboring under some basic misconceptions, including the belief that there is some sort of justice in the world and that there is some way of identifying and punishing presumed guilt which will solve problems rather than make them worse. IMO his extreme hostility to religion spills over into a lack of empathy for Israel and the Israelis.

He didn’t say that the attacks on Mumbai were by part of a Wahabbi inspired group, he said that “Hamas, FataH and HizbAllah want to kill Jews” and that the “The proof of the pudding came in Mumbai”, which is simply false.

In making this statement you’re being pedantic and unfair to Ruvy. As I said before, from Ruvy’s perspective all terrorist groups are branches from a single ideological trunk. That the terrorists in Mumbai chose to target jews is just another confirmation that jews are the general target of terrorism. It’s an established fact that the other groups he names kill jews. Seeing another supposedly separate group do the same thing confirms for him his belief in the universality of jew hatred. Ruvy may be wrong, but it is unfair to say that he is lying. You tend to call people ‘liars’ when you don’t or choose not to understand them. It’s an offensive practice and shows you to be arrogant and lacking in empathy.

It doesn’t matter that he sees everybody opposed to certain Israelis’ attempts to colonise other people’s territory as part of the same group or not. Not seeing any meaningful distinction is simply another part of the strategy of not engaging with any of these people, which is a large part of the problem in the first place.

It’s relatively reasonable to argue that non-engagement is a viable answer to the problem of Israel, or at least as viable as any other. Why can’t Israel’s neighbors leave it alone while Israel leaves them alone in turn? It’s a reasonable position and one which is acceptable to many Israelis. The problem is that it requires Israel’s neighbors to at least accept the idea that Israel has a right to exist, and many of them will not accept that principle.

Sooner or later, Israel is going to have to find a way to negotiate a way to co-exist with its neighbours and the longer hysterical extremists like him are involved in the process, the longer it will take.

The fact that Ruvy is a hystrical extremist actually has very little relevance to the issues at hand. His stance is primarily reactive. If people left him and Israel alone they wouldn’t be a problem to anyone but each other.

It seems to me to be a simple fact that if Israel genuinely wanted peace, it could have either negotiated it or simply imposed it a long time ago. Instead it has persisted in trying to control as much territory, and water resources, as possible, a strategy guaranteed to inflame the region.

Except that it remains the case that major powers in the region do not accept its right to exist as a nation and will not suddenly change that viewpoint if Israel starts behaving itself. No matter how excessive its actions are and no matter how aggressive and expansionistic they appear, they remain at core a reaction to a perceived ongoing threat, and while they may be overreacting, the threat is real.

Furthermore, it is deliberately keeping the people who live in Gaza in the most appalling conditions by aggressively controlling the flow of basic necessities, such as fuel and food, into Gaza, even to the extent of blockading the Gazan coast, which is pretty much an act of war or terrorism in its own right.

And they would argue that those people would not BE in Gaza, at least not in numbers which the conditions there cannot support, if neighboring countries had not forced them to move there specifically to create a threat to Israel. And that argument does have validity. Their response is wrong, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and their excesses don’t absolve everyone else of guilt. The ultimate argument on their side, which you certainly won’t accept, is that they have the power and therefore they are inherently in the right. They control the territory. Do what they say, leave or die.

The end result of all this has been the rise of extremism and terrorism across a wide part of the Muslim world, which has left the world in this terrible situation. It follows therefore that it is Israel that is directly responsible for the dire situation we all find ourselves in.

This is just utter Bullshit. Wahabbism originated in the 18th century and came from Salafism which goes back to the 12th century, and the militant tradition in Islam goes back much farther than that. Mohammed was a genocidal maniac and it hasn’t gotten any better since then. Extremism has been part of Islam since it began, and was even present when the Caliphate was a world power and they were not threatened by Jews or Christians or were at worst on equal terms. Israel is NOT responsible for making Islam what it is today, because it had those same characteristics when the jews were a subject people spread all over the world and weilding little or no power.

It is not wrong to resist or even hate, the cause of such poison, which is Israel, not a movement that has gained almost all of its strength by opposing Israel.

This is where I can’t help coming to the conclusion that you’re not much different from Ruvy, because your conclusion that it is okay to hate Israel and declare it to be the poisonous sole cause of these problems is as irrational, unsupportable and seemingly fanatical as his beliefs. Yes, Israel deserves to be reviled for the things it has done, but the truth is that Israel is hated just for existing, and that is not right.

Furthermore, it is the extremist religious philosophy espoused by the likes of Ruvy, that is directly feeding the rise of Muslim extremism and terrorism throughout the world, not Islam itself.

Again, untrue. The fanatical element in Islam was there before the existence of a modern state of Israel and would continue if Israel were destroyed. There are plenty of other enemies for it to target. Sunnis don’t kill Shia because they are jews. Kashmiri muslims don’t kill Hindis because they are jews. There is something fundamentally sick in muslim society which goes beyond just terrorism and most of it is justified by the Q’ran and a long religious tradition.

Now, if you want to blame the Jews, I’m open to the argument that Muhammed stole a lot of his worst ideas from Judaism, but that’s another issue altogether.

The only solution is for a directly negotiated settlement, and every time there is yet another act of terrorism by either side simply makes that solution be further delayed, which seems to imply that Ruvy and his ilk have a vested interest in Muslim terrorism and behaving in such a way as to encourage it. Hardly a recipe for peace is it?

IMO no negotiated settlement will ever work until one side effectively destroys the other or does so much harm to them that they are in a state of abject surrender. Since I don’t think it’s realistic for Israel to destroy all of Islam, that means there will be peace when Israel is a smoking, depopulated wasteland and not before.

Let’s also not forget that Ruvy so hates many of his own people that on more than one occasion he has written right here on Blogcritics how he would approve of an Iranian nuclear strike on Tel Aviv.

The fact that Ruvy is so fundamentally wrong on so many levels doesn’t actually strengthen your arguments, except where they apply to Ruvy’s personal failings.

Dave

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

Good God! I knew the article policy was no less than 300 words… when did it hit the comments too?

Cindy D

ROFLOL JET!

Cindy D

Do I really want to read Dave’s post? What if I feel I’ll have to reply? It could take hours.

Cindy D

As soon as Dave leaves his easy chair his daughter, with a sigh of relief, turns on what she wanted to watch.

Cindy D

Ah, nope that’s as far as I’ll go with that post.

taxpayer

“Israel is NOT responsible for making Islam what it is today…”

Of course, Nalle.

We all realize that Hamas and Hezbollah were founded in the 12th century and not during the past 30 years.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Taxpayer, do you actually believe that Hamas and Hezbollah are the entirety of the problem and that they aren’t just the latest manifestation of it? Do they not teach any kind of world history in American High Schools anymore?

Dave

taxpayer

“Do they not teach any kind of world history in American High Schools anymore?”

Nalle, do you have a history book you can reference that supports you?

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Chris Rose –

One wonders what YOUR point of view would be if America were MUCH weaker and surrounded by nations that had attacked in concert twice in the past forty-one years with the express intention of exterminating your nation, whose people, as Ruvy said, “dance in the streets when we die.”

Ruvy IS wrong one some things, and for the life of me I don’t see a solution to the Gordian knot that is the continuing issue between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the terrorist groups in the countries surrounding Israel, but when your country – considered by your people to BE the Holy Land – has been twice invaded within your lifetime, and there are tens of thousands just outside your borders who want you, your family, and your whole RACE dead, would YOU be so kind and forgiving and understanding to them?

Let’s say that Mexico is Muslim-ruled. WHAT, then, would be your viewpoint if during a cease-fire, the Islamic extremists of Mexico decided to launch 300 missiles into the American homeland, targeting cities with innocent men and women? Even given the wrongs that America had done to the Muslim Mexicans in the past, would you stand idly by calling those people thirsting for retribution ‘hate-filled’?

It’s just like the old Indian prayer, “May I not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins”.

I disagree that all Muslims want death for all Jews – in fact, ‘Christians’ have killed FAR more Jews than have the Muslims…and even today there are Jews living peacefully in Muslim countries. YES, the Wahhabis are extremist and (along with the Taliban) embody the worst of Islam. BUT the VAST majority of Muslims want PEACE, and so do the VAST majority of Jews.

I agree with Ruvy that America and the other ‘major’ powers need to keep from meddling within the region, for the more we antagonize either side, the less influence we have overall.

The ONLY possible solution to Middle Eastern peace…is prosperity. The more prosperous a people are, the less they want to go kill their neighbors. That’s not a perfect rule, but it is true in most cases…including the Middle East. The proof lies in the fact that the more prosperous countries (with the exception of the rhetoric coming from Iran) are not themselves publicly howling about ‘evil’ Israel.

But my question stands, Chris – there are millions of hypothetical Muslims in Mexico who want America, and all Americans, dead. They’ve just broken a cease-fire by launching three hundred missiles at our cities. Will you cry out for vengeance? Or will you stand by and call ‘hate-filled’ those crying out for such vengeance?

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Oh, I love playing let’s pretend, even when it involves countries I don’t live in.

What happens is the USA’s missile defence system knocks out all the missiles and then invisible smart nanobombs track back to the launch sites and take them out.

Les Slater

“…our rights to sovereignty total over all of the Land of Israel arise out the Resolutions on Palestine reached at San Remo on 24-25 1920. These resolutions were reached by those powers which defeated the Ottoman Empire in 1917, and reached by their rights as victors who had stripped said empire of its territories in the Near East.”

So, the legality of Israel boils down to the spoils of imperial plunder. It still exists at the behest of imperial will. It does not now, nor did it ever, have anything to do with a safe haven for Jews. It is nothing more than a garrison settler state outpost with Jews playing the pawns.

One day the imperialist ruling classes will find that propping up, or defending Israel, not in their interests and/or ability. Soon after there will nothing left of the political entity that once called itself Israel. God will not come to the rescue.

No, no, no, don’t dodge the question! We’ve been attacked by 300 missiles and we do NOT (even in reality) have the ability along the Mexican border to stop them!

What is your response?

Gee whiz, but you conservatives HATE to answer what you would do if you were in someone else’s shoes. Empathy has never been a conservative’s strong suit….

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Glenn, I must ask, are you drunk? There is no point at all in making up arbitrary what if situations, except for the fun of working out game play. And if you think I’m a conservative in any political sense, you’re simply not paying attention.

Les Slater

Cindy,

I am not at all impressed with these Greek ‘workers’. They don’t seem like workers at all.

‘Your struggle is the content’, in itself, has no content. You would never know from reading that so-called ‘workers’ letter what content, if any, they might be in solidarity with. We only find tactics, attacking police stations or looting stores.

You might get the impression that the act of looting a store is the same as expropriating the capitalist class. It ain’t and these letter writing ‘workers’ are politically very immature.

Les

Clavos

“Sox Pupuli”

???

Clavos

And if you think I’m a conservative in any political sense, you’re simply not paying attention.

I’ll have some of what Glenn’s smoking…

zingzing

yeah, glenn… sheesh. chris is one of the good guys. some of the time. except when he sticks britain up his ass and pukes up some poncy palaver.

Clavos

Hmmm. I thought Britain lives up Chris’s ass…

Cindy D

Les,

I have a radio program that suggests that the people who do have the content, are trying to mount a leadership to be followed.

I was going to continue but I’ll stop here.

That is what I guess is different about an Anarchist and a Communist.

Cindy D

This is what I will say. If you were an Anarchist Les. You would understand.

Cindy D

It’s our turn anyway. I am going to be hopeful and work very hard. There’s not much other choice.

Cindy D

Les,

Do you know they have occupied 800 high schools and 200 universities? They have occupied the major union?

Cindy D

Do you know that sympathetic responses are occurring around the world? Look at this map Les.

Nalle, do you have a history book you can reference that supports you?

Taxpayer, there isn’t a history book on the subject which doesn’t support me, except perhaps some written in Iran, and even they take some pride in the warlike traditions and cultural superiority of Islam. Go read anything by Bernard Lewis. That’s a good starting point for understanding the history of Islam.

Dave

Les Slater

“I have a radio program that suggests that the people who do have the content, are trying to mount a leadership to be followed.”

They say: “Don’t listen to any political organization (either anarchists or anyone)”

Not a great endorsement for whatever they have to say.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

So, the legality of Israel boils down to the spoils of imperial plunder. It still exists at the behest of imperial will. It does not now, nor did it ever, have anything to do with a safe haven for Jews. It is nothing more than a garrison settler state outpost with Jews playing the pawns.

Who was it earlier who was doubting the anti-semitism of the far left? It goes hand in hand with the anti-imperialism fantasies which so obsess those whose own dream of empire failed with the fall of the Berlin wall.

Dave

Cindy D

Oh and Les,

You do understand the workers are talking to the students Les, not the Anarchists.

Cindy D

I hope you realized that.

Cindy D

Les,

You do realize that there are various factions trying to adopt the students to their ideologies there?

Right?

What they are saying is don’t follow anyone’s model that you don’t directly deal with one to one.

Les Slater

Dave,

The equating of the political entity of Israel with Jews, which you have essentially done in your 133, is in itself, anti-Semitic.

In the state of Israel, it is the Jewish population that are the pawns.

Les

Cindy D

When those workers were in their own uprising. They fell for rhetoric of an ideology. They lost everything. You do know the history and the circumstances well enough to be telling me something sound don’t you?

Cindy D

These are mostly high school students. What kind of content do they need besides not merely mistaking burning things up and looting shops with the point?

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

There’s something uniquely arrogant about telling people who have chosen to become part of a nation or follow an ideology that they are ‘pawns’ suggesting that they are too stupid or gullible to even have free will.

Dave

Les Slater

“You do understand the workers are talking to the students Les, not the Anarchists.”

I know workers are talking to the students. I was referring to the letter that you linked in your 117. Their ‘Don’t listen to any political organization (either anarchists or anyone)’, implies to me that they are identifying themselves as anarchists. Where it is published also implies this.

And, ‘Our age difference and the general estrangement make it difficult for us to discuss with you in the streets; this is why we send you this letter’.

So these ‘workers’ admit that they are ‘estranged’ from these youth. They have to ‘send you this letter’. This is pure nonsense. I know workers that are talking with them ‘in the streets’.

Les Slater

Dave,

Having free will does not make one immune from being used as a pawn. Freedom has its limits. Neither does intelligence help from finding oneself being used as a pawn.

It all boils down to whether Israel has any other purpose than to help keep imperialist coffers full. You do not agree with my position on that. In my opinion that neither makes you stupid or gullible.

Les

Cindy D

Les,

They opened a door so the students would connect with them. Yes they are Anarchists and that is my blog so yes it would seem you are right about the source being Anarchist.

The reason they would not naturally connect is that the workers are about late 30’s to early 40s and the students are what 13/14 to maybe 23? With most being in high school.

Kids don’t hang with old folks naturally. face to face kids might be uneasy or intimidated. They extended a formal invitation. Quite a natural and human response from nurturing adults.

I should think they will be talking soon

Cindy D

Besides Les,

I have been reading personal translations for a week or more directly from the Anarchists.

This is what they are saying:

We could give up. But why should we, what would we have then? Things are so bad. This is our sole chance

No matter how they look at it giving up seems like sealing their own fate. I believe that with enough solidarity from outside. And they should as more businesses close. And already people are burning cars and buildings in other countries. making short occupations of embassies and such.

If they get the support I can see no reason for them to stop. The country has already run so low on teargas that they are calling for help from other countries.

The police are frightened. Obviously they can’t just kill someone politically that would spread the movement like fire throughout Europe.

They have to wait and wait. Until the damage is so overwhelming and all the places have been occupied. But, we’ll see. maybe the students will give up and go back to class. That is what the Anarchists don’t want.

Les there is a thing they call themselves there. The 600 Euro (sometimes it’s 700 Euro) Generation. Even with college degrees they can only hope for 600/700 Euros a month. In a country that is as expensive as the rest of Europe.

They are writing that they cannot see themselves being able to raise children or to have a good life.

They have nothing to lose.

Les Slater

My argument is with their politics. Looting and calling for the burning of police stations is counterproductive. It takes the focus off the murderous brutality of the police and what they have actually done, that is the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos. The police should pay for this crime to the full extent of the law.

Do these folk think attacking police is revolutionary? It isn’t unless it is a revolutionary situation and it’s not. Just as looting is not expropriating the capitalist class. To the extent anyone talks them seriously it will be to their detriment.

“There isn’t a history book on the subject which doesn’t support me, except perhaps some written in Iran, and even they take some pride in the warlike traditions and cultural superiority of Islam. Go read anything by Bernard Lewis. That’s a good starting point for understanding the history of Islam.”

Nalle, you want to use Bernard Lewis to explain the source of Palestinian uprisings and Hamas and Hezbollah?

The same Bernard Lewis who is a denier of the deliberate and systematic genocide of one-and-a-half million Armenians which is acknowledged to be one of the first modern, systematic genocides?.

Try some other source.

Cindy D

Les,

The police were arrested one for murder one as an accomplice. Should they all go home and watch the trial on TV?

I mean what else can they do? They are occupying buildings and burning down government property.

This is how it has been done in Greece for a long time. Usually though it all stops pretty quickly.

Okay so what do you think they should they do. Now that the cops are paying for it?

Cindy D

Les,

The Anarchists are not the looters. They were joined by the gypsies and the immigrants (but the immigrants were pressured to stop. And there are the students looting.

Cindy D

And the workers.

Cindy D

You read too much in the MSM news.

Of course they say riots, and looters, like it’s juts a bunch of angry idiots. There is meaning behind it. This is the forth week.

Cindy D

Not the workers looting LOL you know I meant joining.

Les Slater

“The Anarchists are not the looters.”

But some rationalize it. From your link: ‘Don’t be scared by the destruction of commodities. Don’t be scared by people looting stores. We make all these, they are ours. You (just like we in the past) are raised to get up every morning in order to make things that they will later not be yours. Let’s get them back all together and share them. Just like we share our friends and the love among us.’

Cindy D

Oh sure some of the Anarchists will loot. I mean in general. There are as many different mindsets as there are Anarchists. But just generally the Anarchists are burning police stations and banks and usurping radio stations and TV stations to encourage participation like that. And some workers occupied a big union.

No that quote is the workers talking to the students. Some students will be thinking Oh my god they are wrecking our society, I want out.

So, they are comforting the students. It’s only a natural thing.

Cindy D

Then they give appropriate constructive advise. Don’t just sit in the schools and occupied buildings waiting for whatever happens. Turn them into you communities.

Cindy D

It is a letter to very young people. You can see that in the comment–you are doing this because you don’t like your classes. Good. Now they will move the students forward from that childish idea. They offer support and assistance, advice. You can count on us and call on us.

Cindy D

It is a direct teaching the students of what Anarchism is. Don’t be fooled by believing its about the violence and don’t worry about the destruction we can rebuild it. We’ll all share it. It’s all ours anyway. We made it all.

Les Slater

I agree with ‘Don’t just sit in the schools and occupied buildings waiting for whatever happens. Turn them into you communities’. This they could do a lot with. The looting and the ritual battles with the police are just a counterproductive distraction.

Cindy D

And that is the world that comes after the revolt. The world where we share. It’s eloquent written. It accounts for everything the children would feel. And it promises what anarchism is, a society where we live peacefully. We share, we work together in support.

Cindy D

Yes, but Anarchists guide they to not usurp or present authority. They gently guide. They don’t require. They allow personal creation.

Cindy D

They don’t say for example. It’s not a good reason just to do this because you don’t like your classes or its fun to break things or loot shops.

They just suggest.

Cindy D

And they accept that that is the initial reason why the children would join.

Les Slater

Cindy,

re. 157. Your defense of that letter is turning into nothing but a rationalization. They are not addressing the students as workers but as former students that were involved in the 90-91 struggle. There is no hint of anything worker about the letter.

Come on, read that letter again. It can’t be taken seriously.

Les

Cindy D

Children are respected.

Cindy D

I’ve read the letter several times. But I’ll read it again with as much of a critical eye as I can muster.

Les, why should they address the students from the persona of a worker. They are seeking identification. They are wanting the students to identify with them.

Les, do you have children? maybe you aren’t around them much?

Les Slater

Stop calling them children.

Cindy D

I talk to my nephew about my experiences in common with him. He doesn’t care what I do at work. He has not understanding of it. I talk to him about when I wa in High School.

Cindy D

Okay.

But my 15 year old nephew still plays with his men in battles.

Cindy D

And he smokes. And I won’t let him smoke near me. So when I took him to NY he wanted to know if I would force him not to smoke. And I ask what do you think?

That’s it. He can make up his own mind. He wants me to be the school principal.

Cindy D

I guess Communism is missing an element. Anarchism is better.

Cindy D

You guys are too wrapped up in the worker thing. You need to relax and enjoy.

Cindy D

I am actually surprised. Work is a very natural thing when you aren’t alienated from it. Everybody works.

Les Slater

I have no problem speaking with high school students about politics. They see what’s going on around them and have ideas. They are very open. Many have concluded what they are taught and what the media feeds them is not necessarily reliable or true.

From what I have read from student leaders in Athens, child would be the last word I would use to describe them.

Well You are a grown man and I am a motherly Aunt. It’s natural. I of cousre have intellectual discussions with my nephew and nice. I do’ condescend like they are infants. But I think of them as children. still.

Cindy D

don’t condescend

Cindy D

Or speak down. we have important and relevant discussions. Maybe it is a personal failing of mine to wish they would always be young. I have also been watching videos of the murdered boy. And thinking of him as a child.

Cindy D

The women from Greece will sometimes refer to him as a child. the men say boy or teen etc. It has to do with such a young death. i feel motherly.

Cindy D

Did you see the marxist dishwashing thing? LOL that’s you Les!

Les Slater

What you got against dish washing? Marx would call that a fetish.

Cindy D

now if you look around that site you’ll see posters about what Anarchists think. And you won’t see any mention of dialectics. We are more like hippies who mostly wash and mostly accept work.

Cindy D

ROFLOL Les xoxoxo

Cindy D

well, some of us are, some are wack jobs, party people, whatever the whole spectrum

Cindy D

but their are generally accepted things like shared work naturally

Cindy D

and we don’t typically plan. we believe that what we want to do can work precisely because we don’t plan it all out before we know what to expect

Cindy D

we say, when the time comes we’ll all get together and figure it out.

Les Slater

‘And you won’t see any mention of dialectics’

Dialectics don’t have to mentioned to be there. Withering away is dialectical.

Cindy D

it’s a drawback and why Anarchists fail mostly in confusion and disorganization. but the Greeks have a lot of history with protest they may have learned enough

Cindy D

a drawback but also the central tenet–no authority.

Cindy D

although leadership is helpful and one joins by choice.

Les Slater

‘it’s a drawback and why Anarchists fail mostly in confusion and disorganization’

And that’s one of the reasons workers will look elsewhere.

Cindy D

on the front of that site it says a lot

we are in pursuit of a freer and more joyful world.

Cindy D

well i didn’t know that until now. i never knew a Communist.

Cindy D

but in Greece the Communists aren’t doing half as much as the anarchists and the youth prefer the anarchists

Cindy D

now i know why LOL

Cindy D

perhaps it is because of Communist history. it gets usurped a lot by authority.

Anarchism prevents that by complete rejection of authority

maybe it is a safety mechanism that developed as a response to socialist or communist tendency to have a state

Cindy D

if we ever do succeed it will be much more fun and there will be zero chance of a state

Cindy D

anarchists do not fail at life though just at rebellion

they live in squats and seem to manage fine

Cindy D

in greece that is

Cindy D

i have a story about a woman who was on vacation. she just walks up to an anarchist squat and asks if she can stay there. they check and say maybe three days maybe longer

she moves in eats drinks, everything is clean, that’s it

they have a wild party

sit on the balcony

squats are occupied buildings from what i understand.

Cindy D

the woman was a stranger from america

Cindy D

okay, I’ll let you escape. I learned a lot. One thing is sure. I couldn’t be a Marxist hehe

Cindy D

and i would also like to say thanks for that thing where I was saying “we” without realizing it. when I stopped, which took awhile it really changed me.

Les Slater

‘…pursuit of a freer and more joyful world’

Add creativity bounded only by social responsibility and it would be all I’m looking for.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Les, Cindy,

Gosh, it looks like the two of you are having a domestic spat.

I hate to take you away from such a pleasurable diversion to point out a few realities.

Les, you quote me, “…our rights to sovereignty total over all of the Land of Israel arise out the Resolutions on Palestine reached at San Remo on 24-25 1920. These resolutions were reached by those powers which defeated the Ottoman Empire in 1917, and reached by their rights as victors who had stripped said empire of its territories in the Near East.”

And then whine:

So, the legality of Israel boils down to the spoils of imperial plunder. It still exists at the behest of imperial will. It does not now, nor did it ever, have anything to do with a safe haven for Jews. It is nothing more than a garrison settler state outpost with Jews playing the pawns.

All international law is the spoils of imperial plunder writ on paper to make it look good – or the revulsion of “humanists” when they see the real results of imperial plunder and genocide. That is all there is in the world of lies and falsehood ha’olám hashéqer. And a good lawyer, Howard Grief, took some of those writings of imperial plunderers to describe their grant of sovereignty to the Jewish People in the Land of Israel. No references to G-d or Divine Landlords – just the good old rules of imperial plunder – worked for once to favor the Jew and not his murderer.

In the eyes of an outsider like you or the other commenters on this site, all Israel can be is a garrison state fighting for its life – and until its leaders evince the faith in G-d they are supposed to that is all Israel will remain. And the law of the jungle, the law of the imperial plunderer is the essence of international law. The minute you appeal to international law, you appeal to the law of the jungle. Don’t choke as you swing from the trees Les. And don’t be like George of the Jungle either, crashing into them with your mug. It can hurt.

“In the interview to newsru (a Russian news source), Livni confirmed her allegiance to the disengagement from Gaza, though it led to rocket barrages. Livni said she believes that Hezbollah adheres to the Resolution 1701 on ceasefire in Lebanon, though the terrorist groups violates it daily by reinforcing its arsenals.

Livni supported Israeli ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. She avoided the request to state the points of difference between Kadima and Avoda (Labor).”

In other words for all the Jewish soldiers whose lives will be put at risk to weaken Hamas, Livni still bows at the idol of appeasing Arab terrorists, and still would keep Jews from the holiest site in our faith and our nation, the Temple Mount.

She cannot admit that the expulsion of Jews from their homes in Gush Qatif has led to Hamas and other Arab terrorists obtaining the ability to attack Ashkelon, Ashdod, Be’ersheva and even Tel Aviv. Had Gaza been hit hard four years ago, the need to attack Gaza now would not exist. But Livni and all the scum surrounding her, including Netanyahu, are unwilling to admit the failure of her government’s policies. She still acts like the faithless whore of Babylon she is, and we will all suffer for it.

The fools (the “Israeli leaders” and the PLO) still lust after some dream where they can plunder Jews and Arabs alike (you do realize that the PLO was nothing but a plunder organization – that’s why they were kicked out of power in Gaza), so the Israeli government is doing its part to destroy Hamas, which stands in the way by honestly demanding that Jews be murdered first and looted later. The strategy of the PLO is to loot the Jews first and kill them later. Once you understand basic points like this, then you comprehend how the other laws of the jungle work.

That’s why I prefer the arguments of Howard Grief. At least I benefit by them. So, if necessary, I prefer to see used such weapons as will murder off my enemies, and take some small comfort when the “leaders” here do the same.

Unfortunately as I’ve pointed out, these leaders haven’t the guts to do the job right.

You can go back to arguing with Cindy now.

Cindy D

That would work Les!

let’s see what happens. I will be working hard every day to push as far as I can and to inspire and motivate others

Cindy D

Me and Les have been having a wonderful conversation. I hope he got 1/10 what I got out of it.

Cindy D

One last thing Les.

I am not naive, but I see that if there is ever to be a possibility, if no one believes in it it automatically is a failure

so you will forgive me if I act as if this will work even though I understand it might flop bigtime

I have to choose to believe it or i can’t inspire anyone else and then there is no movement

I hope enough other people think the same way.

Les Slater

I also didn’t understand Ruvy calling it a spat.

Cindy D

if we don’t choose something we can’t have it and if no-one believes no one will choose it.

Cindy D

night night

Cindy D

LOL I guess he didn’t read it just saw all the comments

night to you too Ruvy

Les Slater

‘All international law is the spoils of imperial plunder writ on paper to make it look good…’

At least much of it. You must have noticed that I don’t identify Israel as the center, or source, of the problem. It is imperialism and its whole social edifice that needs to be destroyed. When it is, the legal shadows of past plunders will lose all force.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

I also didn’t understand Ruvy calling it a spat.

My deepest and most humble apologies – evidently this was a bonding session over the rise of workers’ rights developing in the ruins of Europe’s economy. “Love in the Ruins?”

As to the other comments, I do not know whether to to be overjoyed over Dave Nalles’ damningly faint praise as he defends some of my positions or Glenn’s seeming defense of what I write. As for Chris Rose, if I had to read every single comment posted here for content, I’d be the same grouch he is. In fact, I’d probably be worse.

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

Okay, I’ve got a handle on it now, Cindy D is Lou Dobbs in drag?

Mark Eden

#145 — December 27, 2008 @ 23:47PM — Les Slater

My argument is with their politics.

While you might prefer ‘trickle-down’ political theory, their ‘politics’ is developing out of their action.

Looting and calling for the burning of police stations is counterproductive.

Police stations are the physical reality of the oppressive hand of the capitalist class. Burning them is both a symbolic and practical act.

It takes the focus off the murderous brutality of the police and what they have actually done, that is the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

Look around. Apparently this is not the case.

The police should pay for this crime to the full extent of the law.

Whose law?

Do these folk think attacking police is revolutionary? It isn’t unless it is a revolutionary situation and it’s not.

To the extent that a revolutionary situation is developing in this economic crisis, this is part of it.

Just as looting is not expropriating the capitalist class.

You mean the looters should grab the trucks as they leave the factories? The time will come for the workers to grab the factories themselves with the help of their communities.

To the extent anyone talks them seriously it will be to their detriment.

You mean they’ll end up with an axe in their collective head courtesy of some doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist?

It’s a blessing that the ‘Communist’ movement is in disarray and is not in a position to ‘lead’.

Mark

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

Cindy D isn’t Lou Dobbs in drag?

Les Slater

Mark – #216 ,

Referring to my #145, ‘My argument is with their politics’.

‘Their politics’ was referring to ‘workers’ letter linked by Cindy in #117.

“… their ‘politics’ is developing out of their action.”

Writing a letter?

‘Looting and calling for the burning of police stations is counterproductive.’

“Burning them is both a symbolic and practical act.”

Certainly symbolic but don’t see any practicality to it.

‘It takes the focus off the murderous brutality of the police and what they have actually done, that is the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.’

“Look around. Apparently this is not the case.”

Main stream media is indeed concentrating on rioting and looting. The majority of the population does not read anarchist blogs.

‘The police should pay for this crime to the full extent of the law.’

“Whose law?”

Bourgeois law!

‘Do these folk think attacking police is revolutionary? It isn’t unless it is a revolutionary situation and it’s not.’

“To the extent that a revolutionary situation is developing in this economic crisis, this is part of it.”

You are deluding yourself. There is no revolutionary situation developing.

‘Just as looting is not expropriating the capitalist class.’

“You mean the looters should grab the trucks as they leave the factories?”

Don’t be silly.

“The time will come for the workers to grab the factories themselves…”

Time is not ripe for that. It may happen on limited scale but not lead to general expropriating of capitalist class.

‘To the extent anyone talks them seriously it will be to their detriment.’

Again, I’m referring to the ‘workers’ letter that Cindy linked to.

Les

Cindy D

This comment is for my own benefit. I regret saying this and it has bugged me all day:

“Now they will move the students forward from that childish idea.”

Children experience the oppression of school and all that goes along with it. I did not mean to illegitimate that in any way by calling it “childish”.

I should have said “concerns of children”.

Cindy D

Jet,

Okay, I’ve got a handle on it now, Cindy D is Lou Dobbs in drag?

I don’t know much about Lou Dobbs. But noticing what he thinks about “illegal” immigrants, he can kiss my butt.

I am really Jello Biafra in drag.

Sheesh, I would think you would have figured that out!

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Nalle, you want to use Bernard Lewis to explain the source of Palestinian uprisings and Hamas and Hezbollah?

No, I suggested him as a good starting point for those who want to understand the larger history of Islam which does contribute to the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah, but is more background than proximate cause.

The same Bernard Lewis who is a denier of the deliberate and systematic genocide of one-and-a-half million Armenians which is acknowledged to be one of the first modern, systematic genocides?.

He doesn’t deny the massive massacres of Armenians, he just argues that it was not a deliberate government policy. I realize the difference may be too subtle for you, but it’s significant.

Try some other source.

Why? He’s the leading recognized authority on Islamic history. Plus he’s my graduate adviser’s graduate adviser so I’ve got to plug for him.

Dave

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

The spread of rioting in Europe is one of the inevitable results of a stagnant society where opportunity for individual accomplishment is stifled by rampant socialism, entrenched bureaucratic elites and a generally anti-entrepreneurial and anti-capitalist environment.

These students are suffering from cultural despair, having realized that they have no future except to be cogs in the giant impersonal machine of an obscene hybrid of business and government into a giant bureaucratic treadmill.

In school they read about times when society was more open and they are taught to think about the world and philosophy, and when they find that all of that no longer applies in the world they’re stuck with, they become nihilistic, self destructive and rebellious.

It’s a situation which has been building since the 1970s and I think it’s reaching a head. To quote one Sex Pistols song “no future, no future, no future for you.” And you can find the respone in another which says “get pissed, destroy.”

Dave

Cindy D

“In school they read about times when society was more open and they are taught to think about the world and philosophy, and when they find that all of that no longer applies in the world they’re stuck with, they become nihilistic, self destructive and rebellious.”

Sounds just like here.

Cindy D

except the part about society being open and free here. instead our kids read about what a hero Columbus the criminal kidnapper slave-master was for sailing the magical ocean blue

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Cindy, Columbus never set foot on any land which is now part of the US. He had nothing to do with the founding of our nation. In fact, the people who founded our nation repeatedly beat the crap out of his sponsors in multiple wars motivated by a desire for freedom of the seas and of the land, and had a general repugnance for the imperial system which spawned Columbus and grew from his discoveries.

The only reason we have a Columbus day is as a sop to catholic-Americans.

Dave

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

And yes, my comments on Europe do apply here as well, though to a somewhat lesser extent. We haven’t shut down every route to opportunity here yet. Give it about a decade and we’ll either have caught up with them or we will have gone through some sort of radical political change to avoid that fate.

Dave

Cindy D

Dave we have given it since 1750 or so.

10 more years won’t help.

REMF(MCH)

Is it true that rampant socialists, bureaucratic elites, anti-entrepreneurialists and anti-capitalists are also opposed to killing stray dogs with hunting rifles?

taxpayer

“He [Bernard Lewis] doesn’t deny the massive massacres of Armenians, he just argues that it was not a deliberate government policy.”

Nalle, you try to slither out of any fact presented to you.

When is a massive massacre perpetrated by a government not deliberate and not genocide? What Turkey did to the Armenians is far worse than what Saddam did to the Kurds. Of course, Turkey is a “political friend” and Iraq was not. Lewis is a denier of the Armenian genocide for political reasons to support Turkey. Could that be your problem too?

“I realize the difference may be too subtle for you, but it’s significant.”

What is significant is your adding this sly insult in an attempt to disparage my comment.

When liberal Prime Minister George Papandreou was elected in 1964, it did not sit well in Washington. Things went from bad to worse when Greece further annoyed its superpower benefactor by squabbling with Turkey over Cyprus, and then objecting to U.S. plans to partition the island. Democrat Lyndon Johnson summoned the Greek ambassador for a brief-and very instructive-lesson on how America handles its affairs. “Fuck your parliament and your constitution,” said LBJ. “America is an elephant, Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good…We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me a talk about democracy, parliament, and constitutions, he, his parliament, and his constitution may not last very long.”

Within a year, the Greek Royal Court was able to unseat Papandreou. It was later revealed that CIA Chief-in-Station in Athens, John Maury, had helped King Constantine in 1965 in the toppling of the Papandreou government. As new elections became inevitable, however, the CIA threw its considerable weight behind Colonel George Papadopoulos who had been on the Agency payroll for 15 years. Before that, he served as a captain in Nazi Security Battalions during the German occupation of Greece. The elephant most certainly did whack the flea in early 1967 when Papadopoulos seized control in a coup. Parliamentary democracy was abolished, while torture, oppression, and political murder became standard policy.

I disagree with you assessment.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Cindy, I’m not sure what your point is with that last comment. Yes, Popadopoulos was a dictator and installed by the US. So? I was in Greece when he was in charge and right after and I didn’t notice a hell of a lot of changes in day to day life. By all accounts it’s not that much better or worse now.

Today Greece is more like the rest of Europe. The oppression is general and institutionalized. Instead of dragging people off to prison and torture they pigeonhole them in dead-end jobs at low wages.

Dave

Cindy D

Dave,

Why do you support a style of government that can do that?

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Cindy, actions like that have nothing to do with the structure of the government. They have to do with the way that power is used by those who the people give it to. Any system of government can be abused. The question is whether our form of government offers methods to address abuses and prevent them in the future, which it generally does.

People were displeased with the policies of the Johnson administration and they made it so clear that he didn’t even run for reelection and would have been voted out of office. Within a few years laws were passed prohibiting many of the abuses of the Johnson era. And after Nixon’s rather different abuses of power laws were passed making those kinds of abuses more difficult. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than any alternative which actually functions in the real world.

As for the policy of replacing foreign leaders with dictators, I’m not entirely opposed to it when considering the big picture. It is certainly true that when the choice is between establishing a government which is institutionally oppressive and a government which is potentially abusive but which may lay the groundwork for future free and representative government, I prefer the latter.

It makes less sense now, but at the height of the cold war it was understandable that a relatively benevolent capitalist dictator looked more appealing than a democratically elected socialist or communist who might come under the sway of the soviety union. Different times. Got to remember that.

Dave

Cindy D

Dave,

Has anything I have ever shown you changed anything you thought? Even a tiny bit?

I’m think I am sure what Cindy is getting at – it is the arrogant and pernicious nature of American political interference overseas. The same administration that overthrew the Greek regime in 1965 had overthrown the fledgling democracy in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and had Levi Eshcol practically on his knees begging for weapons in 1968 after the French fucked over Israel in 1967. Should I talk about ‘Nam?

While Greece may have escaped into the European (really German) shithole from American domination, we in Israel are still firmly attached to the American shithole, with agents from the European shithole trying to suck us in to their “paradise. Which is why I have consistently said that we Israelis need to get rid of you Americans.

You know nothing about democracy, except when it comes to American school-boards. Even there, your knowledge is somewhat suspect. You have excellent institutions for democracy, and the best written constitution on the planet, but you ignore them and either fart in front of your TV’s, booze it up in a bar – or play stupid games on Facebook. Having been an American political activist for many years, as well as a student of political science and public administration, I CAN say that authority. I know what kind of effort it takes to get any American to move his ass to do anything that the media hasn’t hustled with half-naked girls.

So it is no surprise that your governments and the business elites that run and dominate your society back dictators and would-be dictators. Shall I go into the list? It is a rather long one and can get exhaustive.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Like I told you, Jet. I wouldn’t throw any more rocks at the WASP’s nest – just boulders to destroy it and not only piss off the wasps but get rid of them as well.

The truth hurts, and I’ve written the truth here. And as your country sinks lower and lower, the truth will hurt more and more.

Les Slater

“And as your country sinks lower and lower, the truth will hurt more and more.”

But the U.S. is the bedrock of world imperialism. When it goes the legal justification for Israel unravels with it, to say nothing of the social forces that will be unleashed.

Israel is creation of imperialism and dependent on its continuation. There is no escaping that.

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

More sooner than later Ruvy, you’re going to find that all of your Israeli chest beating isn’t making you look like some big fearsome gorilla, but like a little ridiculous chimpanzee waving a toy flag.

I’m certainly glad there aren’t more people like you representing your homeland, or it’d have been turned into a barren dustbowl decades ago.

Where did Israel get all those missiles?, where did Israel get the fighter jets, and then the technical training help so you could build them yourselves? Where did the billions of dollars and tens of thousands of American lives come from to make sure Israel was secure in its borders, and not afraid of Egypt, Lebanon and Syria?

You ungrateful little flea, sooner or later you and your chest-beating cohorts’ mouths are going to push just a little too far, and throw one too many rocks and find out just how much you needed the U.S. to prop up your little oasis by the sea. Sooner or later you’ll find out that “walking softly, but carrying a big stick” doesn’t work if the supplier of your “big sticks” stops sending them to you.

I just hope I’m long gone before it happens, because I don’t think I could bare to watch it my friend.

Mark Eden

Les:

“To the extent that a revolutionary situation is developing in this economic crisis, this is part of it.”

You are deluding yourself. There is no revolutionary situation developing.

This is the question. You might well be correct, and this contraction might pass without causing enough suffering among the have-nots to move the working class to action. It remains to be seen.

Mark

Les Slater

Mark,

‘There is no revolutionary situation developing.’

I was referring to the current situation in Greece.

“…this contraction might pass without causing enough suffering among the have-nots to move the working class to action.”

I do not expect the economic crisis to pass without a revolutionary situation developing. I don’t however see a linear relationship between suffering and revolutionary action. It’s much more complex than that.

Les

Cindy D

Les,

What else has to happen? I need more information.

Mark Eden

Les, the crisis is international; if revolutionary action develops it will be international.

I don’t however see a linear relationship between suffering and revolutionary action. It’s much more complex than that.

We agree on this, of course. The notion that a given amount of suffering will cause revolution is an oversimplification. I do think, however, that revolution will not develop without it. I’d be interested in your laying out some of the complexities that you refer to.

Mark

Mark Eden

Hi, Cindy. I guess that I don’t really need to ask you to take a camera to NY….but I will anyway. btw where’s the article?

Mark

Les Slater

Class battles need to take place. They are taking place. There is class warfare going on right now. The working class is taking a beating but there is resistance and some victories.

Lessons are learned from the victories, and defeats too. We can expect to see more battles. The ruling class is very conscious of this. The working class is not yet.

The workers at Republic Windows and Doors were not suffering, at least not in any historic sense. They just saw an opportunity and had enough courage to go through with it. They fully expected to end up in jail.

The working class gained some pride from this struggle. Also a measure of confidence. The most important thing is the growing realization that the working class in the U.S. is not passive and it can fight for issues beyond just their own immediate issues.

These struggles at the moment are sporadic but will become generalized. The ruling class is not just targeting some sector but the working class as a whole. It will try to buy off and divide but we are making progress against such tactics.

Beyond consciousness of its own identity and potential power, the working class will find it necessary to unite with its brethren in all countries. This is a serious responsibility of all national sectors of the class especially here in the U.S.

Mark Eden

The workers at Republic Windows and Doors were not suffering, at least not in any historic sense.

OK, I’ll run the risk of meaningless argument…being robbed, thrown out of work and put in a position where it will be difficult to keep their families fed and housed was suffering enough to move them to action.

Mark

Cindy D

Hi Mark

I am an exhausted mess. I’m leaving in 45 minutes. I have nothing done. And if you hadn’t said that I would have forgotten a camera. The article–tomorrow I’ll finish it for Wed.) Thank you.

Thank you Les.

And if either of you have anything helpful at any time please speak to me.

Cindy D

I need an education.

Les Slater

Mark,

Of course this is an international crisis and will be fought out internationally.

My 246 was a response to Cindy’s 243 and only touched briefly on the international aspects but I argue amongst revolutionaries that this is by far the most important aspect.

In my thinking through the requirements of a workers party in the U.S. it became pretty clear that it would have to have a principled anti-imperialist thrust, front and center. It would fight to get the imperialist boot off the necks of the toilers worldwide. It would also call for an end of financial intervention, to end all foreign debt of the colonial and semi-colonial countries.

There is a debate going on in Latin America as to whether a socialist revolution is possible in the United States, or anywhere for that matter. What is now developing in this country is weighing in on that debate on the side of the affirmative.

Seeing the U.S. working class as an ally instead of an enemy will be an important factor in the developing struggles in the rest of the world.

Les

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Chris Rose –

Glenn, I must ask, are you drunk? There is no point at all in making up arbitrary what if situations, except for the fun of working out game play.

I’ll take that as your resignation. You refused to even attempt to answer the question…because you KNEW where it would lead.

I can say that because the great majority of people here – including you – are intelligent and literate people…and as such, can be expected to have certain capabilities.

It takes courage to publicly and sincerely admit when one is wrong. That’s why the American public is often willing to forgive a celebrity or politician who admits their fault, but is less willing to do so for those who are obviously guilty but don’t have the intestinal wherewithal to admit it. The American public can see which one has courage, and which one does not.

Just a little something I like to point out in forums….

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Glenn, you can make up as many fantasy interpretations of my reaction as you like but that doesn’t give them any of them any validity, just as your imaginary Mexican scenario lacks validity and is therefore too hypothetical and un-nuanced to take seriously.

I look forward to your realisation and admission of being wrong, should you ever manage to figure it out…

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Sure, Chris.

Either you are completely incapable of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes – “what would I do if I had lived through what they did, and in the same situation they are in today?” – or you know better than to give a straightforward answer.

You’re not stupid, Chris. That means it’s the second possibility.

BUT I’LL GIVE YOU THE CHANCE TO PROVE ME WRONG.
*POOF*! You’re an Israelite, a Jew. The countries surrounding your own has tried to exterminate your country and your people twice in the past forty-one years. You had a six-month-long cease-fire with one of the hard-line Islamic groups who wants you and your people dead…and they’ve just launched 300 missiles at your people.

What do you do, Chris?

I say you’ll dodge the question again, or find some way to say the question isn’t valid. But maybe I’m wrong – here’s your chance!

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

Well, does that mean someone noticed my #240? I thought I’d have to nuke someone!

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

OFF TOPIC –

When Sarah Palin’s daughter’s prospective mother-in-law was arrested for drug possession, comedians noted that if the daughter’s new baby would be a girl, would they call her “Crystal”…and if a boy, perhaps “METHew”

But it’s a boy – and what’s the name? TRIPP!!!!!

How apropos….

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Has anything I have ever shown you changed anything you thought? Even a tiny bit?

Maybe. I can’t recall everything you’ve posted.
I will say that most of it is poorly thought out and pretty irrational.

How do you respond to this post? #75

Not sure why you’re so eager for a response on this. It’s weakly reasoned and self evidently fallacious. If it is the pinnacle of your rhetorical accomplishment as you seem to think it is, then I’m at a loss.

Dave

Cindy D

Dave,

I will say that most of it is poorly thought out and pretty irrational.

Thank you. I shall consider that as hard evidence that I am clearly on the right course.

It’s weakly reasoned and self evidently fallacious.

And it is partly cloudy with a chance of showers. But, you did not solve the problem of how the free market will accomplish its magic with those 4 circumstances.

Cindy D

In fact the nature of your reply indicates your befuddlement. You can’t answer because there is no free market answer. So, you simply prefer to dismiss.

Coward.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

But the U.S. is the bedrock of world imperialism.

Les, the US is expressly non-imperialistic despite some recent stumbles in foreign policy. If we’re the bedrock of world imperialism then there is no longer any world imperialism.

And on another topic, you’re completely deluded about the ‘working class’ in the US. It’s a fundamental mistake to believe that the US even has a working class as you would define it. The US has a class which works, but which is more like the classic definition of a bourgeoisie, especially in its values and sense of identity. And the society is distinguished in particular by the fact that even those working at the lower levels of wages do not generally self-identify as a class, but think of themselves as part of a higher class, or as aspirants to that class. The idea of upward mobility is so ingrained in the society that workers largely do not think of themselves as a working class, or those who do are such a small minority as to be meaningless.

70% of the nation’s workforce is entrepreneurial in nature – either self employed, small business operators, or working for small businesses. Another 20% are employed by government. The remaining 10% are all you’ve got left to make a classical working class, and half of them are looking for a way to strike out on their own.

Your marxist paradigms are hopelessly dated and meaningless.

Dave

Cindy D

#246

Les,

How can their be a revolution if their aren’t enough people to participate in it?

If people are content why should they have a revolution. Revolution is born of discontent. Discontent is what I call suffering.

I saw a million shoppers shopping today. They don’t appear to want a revolution–yet.

Cindy D

Dave,

When presented with an idea that confronts your opinion your answer seems to be to modify reality. No wonder you don’t do much personal changing.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Again, just spouting nonsense, Cindy. No one can change reality and I am a creature of infinite changeability.

Dave

Les Slater

Dave,

“The US has a class which works, but which is more like the classic definition of a bourgeoisie, especially in its values and sense of identity. And the society is distinguished in particular by the fact that even those working at the lower levels of wages do not generally self-identify as a class, but think of themselves as part of a higher class, or as aspirants to that class. The idea of upward mobility is so ingrained in the society that workers largely do not think of themselves as a working class, or those who do are such a small minority as to be meaningless.”

Some truth in the above. I certainly see much evidence of it. However, most people are not objectively what they aspire to be.

Much of my 246, especially the last paragraph, implies that the class (objectively it exists) is not conscious of itself as a class. It is at an early stage of such consciousness.

The history of the U.S. working class has been one of it often being transitory. For an extended period many who worked, as a worker, did so only to make enough money to migrate to where they could acquire some land and farm. Some started businesses and some of them even got quite wealthy.

When I was growing up, during and after WW-II, there were plenty of farms around. I had relatives that had farms. I spent time on and worked on farms. There were farms of various sizes in the rural area I lived. Even many workers had a small plot for growing vegetables and maybe some chickens or even a goat. That was true for my family. At the same time there was a migration from the country to the city, farmers becoming workers. Gardens and livestock were becoming less common. I think it was this year that the world’s population became more urban than rural.

The post-war capitalist economic boom in this country coincided with the continued expansion of agribusiness. The standard of living of the working class was rising while small farms were being squeezed out by larger farms and agribusiness. At the end of the post-war economic boom and the beginning of the declines in both the living standards of workers and the sustainability of small farms, we saw objectively less opportunity for a worker to become anything but a worker.

At the same time small businesses were also under pressure. More and more were being encroached upon by larger entities. Even the technical entrepreneurial opportunities were beginning to dry up. Capital was being invested but failures were the rule.

The capitalist economic crisis has been brewing for some time now but we’ve reached the point where further credit bubbles are not going to solve anything. The deepening of the crisis is accelerating and is not going to reverse in any meaningful or long term sense. The opportunities for workers to move out of their class have been reduced, are reducing still and will continue to reduce. Some will make it out. Not many.

Workers will learn, and are learning, that there is a class war and the best solution is to resist the onslaught, to fight. Class consciousness is developing and will continue to develop.

Les

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Glenn, as I have already told you twice, I’m not dodging your question, I’m just not answering it because there is no point to it.

Please persist with making up your own false interpretations of my position though, as it continues to make your inability to accept my opinion of your “what if” scenario look ever more stupid – or drunk!

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Glenn,

Chris has no answer for you. Give it up. He knows when he is wrong, and he knows answering you would lead him up a paddle without a creek. That explains his silence.

Actually, though, the deal here is not quite what it looks like. Katyusha rockets are not little kiddie toys. They kill. And so do Qassam rockets.

But in many respects, in spite of the use of Google Earth (if you have a cell phone with all the bells and whistles to aim a rocket, what kind of humanitarian disaster are you facing exactly – a shortage of silicon wafers to dip in your Turkish coffee?) a Qassam, a Katyusha or a Grad-Katyusha are just very noisy spears that go for many kilometers. A V1 or V2 was probably more advanced.

If and when Hamas uses missiles with guidance systems and liquid fuel, we’ll know they are serious and have serious arms. Right now they are trying to draw Israeli soldiers into a ground offensive – where they feel they will be on more solid ground.

But the deal here is that one terrorist – Hamas – is to be replaced with another in Gaza – the PLO. And our boys are going to be the fodder for the effort, dying to put corrupt crooks in power in Gaza to replace the more honest (if seemingly more vicious) Hamas.

The PLO are not “moderates”. They want to kill us as much as Hamas does. But it all boils down to a difference in tactics. Hamas wants to kill first – and then loot. The PLO wants to loot first – and then kill. That what was behind the willingness to cut a deal – the “Oslo Accords” – with Israel in the first place. The Saudi “peace plan” is the same kind of strategy, dressed up in a thobe.

So, I find myself very conflicted about this all. Essentially what has occurred is that the probable losers in an election went to war in an attempt to win it by wrapping themselves in the flag. A false flag operation, if there was any. But the fellow these losers, Livni and Barak, want to defeat, Netanyahu, is not much better. He just puts on a better show as a nationalist for the media.

Were it not for Netanyahu, Hebron would still be under our control.

In other words, it all sucks.

There can be no peace made with a terrorist. The terrorist must be murdered and the will to become a terrorist must be crushed. The propaganda creating terrorism must be eliminated. Then maybe, there can be peace.

Maybe.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Glenn, let’s amend that last comment. “That explains his silence refusal to answer.”

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Ruvy! I was wondering where your special branch of wilful ignorance had got to!!

How delightful to see you joining Glenn in the habit of simply making stuff up when people don’t want to play your stupid games. Did he get that from you or vice versa – or did you both arrive at pointlessness independently of each other?

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

The U.S. has no working class, because GOP corporate America Inc. found a cheaper one in China and the Indian Ocean Rim.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Face it, Chris. You know you are wrong. If you were in uniform and the IRA attempted to blow up the BBC, you would be after the terrorists in no time flat. You do remember that the IRA tried to blow up your beloved BBC, don’t you? I do! I heard live reportage from the BBC while I was getting dressed to go to work that morning.

In addition, your navy sailed halfway around the world to make sure that a few English speaking shepherds on the Falklands would not have to learn how to talk to government bureaucrats in Spanish.

No government but the Israeli one would be stupid enough to take the shit they have from Arab terrorists who want to murder them off. And let me remind you that the assholes in charge are the secular types who have no use for G-d or that dusty old tome, the Bible. They are just like you! It’s remarkable what greed – and a denial of one’s own heritage – will do to people.

If you don’t believe me, ask the folks who got fucked over by good old Bernie – the goniff that Madoff with the cash.

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

Chris,

But frankly folks like you do not bother me at all, except as minor nuisances. Even Jet’s comments do not make much of a dent.

No, what pisses me off is when an alleged Jew writes something like this, after I post the experiences of people kicked out of their homes, living in fancied up cardboard boxes, and told that for shelter from Arab rockets, they could crawl into sewer pipes for shelter.

well Ruvy, sorry but I do not have a lot of sympathy for settlers.

People like that – especially alleged Jews – can burn in hell.

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

Congrats Ruvy, not that I agree with you (which I don’t), but that’s the first time in a long time that you’ve actually gotten to the point without wandering around it all over the place first.

These 20 paragraph sermons of your’s usually only cause the reader to forget your point, long before you eventually get to it.

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Ruvy, when I need help facing reality, rest assured that you, the king of wishful thinking and chief cheerleader for mass murder, will be absolutely the last person I will consult.

Until that fantastical day arrives, I don’t intend to waste my time answering irrelevant artificial hypotheticals. I will say though that if I was still in uniform, I wouldn’t be “after the terrorists in no time flat” like some vigilante from the Wild West, I would be respecting the orders given through the chain of command.

As you like theoretical scenarios so much, here’s one for you: An Israeli government finally faces up to reality and makes a comprehensive peace agreement with all its neighbours in exchange for giving back some land. What is your response?

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Ruvy, if you are going to quote other people’s words and then attack them, it usually helps understanding if you post your response somewhere close to the source. Your mention of settlers in #270 is the first time that word has appeared on this page, so your response is irrelevant to the discussion here.

Fortunately, there is no such thing as burning in hell, although such childish expression is entirely symptomatic of the delusional hatred you so blithely spew out like an over-excited volcano.

Mark Eden

Try as the owners’ propagandists might to convince us otherwise, there is no wedge between workers and the petit bourgeoisie. The myths of the ‘ownership society’ and of ‘upward mobility’ will fade if/as the contraction becomes a general crisis.

Mark

http://ruvysroost.blogspot.com Ruvy

See, Glenn?

Chris knows he is wrong and is shucking and jiving all over the damned place!

Cindy D

Hi Mark,

The event was not what I expected. They very much need organizational help. I made a good contact–who is very active (weekly community events) in Hampshire College which is full of Anarchists.

We had a photo op. A Greek photographer took our picture and said she would be submitting it for publication in Greece.

Next event looks more promising.

http://www.EurocriticsMagazine.com Christopher Rose

Ruvy, you still can’t respond to the truth with anything other than avoidance and/or lies, huh?

You know, in principle I am prepared to respect your determined commitment of something so implausible as to make the purchasers of London Bridge look astute, but the way you conduct yourself makes that simply impossible. How pitiful…

It seems to me that you are the one living in a fantasy world. You moved your whole family first to Jerusalem and then to what a vast majority of the world considers occupied territory, yet you’re still just as poor as you were, maybe even poorer. Still, at least you have your religious dreams to keep you and your family safe and well.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

When I was growing up, during and after WW-II, there were plenty of farms around. I had relatives that had farms. I spent time on and worked on farms. There were farms of various sizes in the rural area I lived. Even many workers had a small plot for growing vegetables and maybe some chickens or even a goat. That was true for my family. At the same time there was a migration from the country to the city, farmers becoming workers. Gardens and livestock were becoming less common. I think it was this year that the world’s population became more urban than rural.

I don’t know what’s going on up where you live, but down here in Texas we’ve seen a growth of population in the small towns and rural areas and a limited return to that lifestyle over the past couple of decades. There are more small farms and people with garden plots and limited amounts of livestock and a positive boom in farmers markets and people selling what they grow to others living in the exurban communities.

At the end of the post-war economic boom and the beginning of the declines in both the living standards of workers and the sustainability of small farms, we saw objectively less opportunity for a worker to become anything but a worker.

That may have been true in the immediate post-war period, but it is a trend which had reversed itself dramatically by the 1960s.

At the same time small businesses were also under pressure. More and more were being encroached upon by larger entities. Even the technical entrepreneurial opportunities were beginning to dry up. Capital was being invested but failures were the rule.

You’re missing the big picture here. Yes, 2/3 of small businesses fail within the first two years, but so many are started that over the years the total number has been steadily growing. More and more work has become decentralized and businesses operate through subcontracting work out to specialized small businesses and craftsmen.

The capitalist economic crisis has been brewing for some time now but we’ve reached the point where further credit bubbles are not going to solve anything. The deepening of the crisis is accelerating and is not going to reverse in any meaningful or long term sense. The opportunities for workers to move out of their class have been reduced, are reducing still and will continue to reduce. Some will make it out. Not many.

I think you’re being misled by reliance on a textbook definition of ‘capitalist’ which no longer really applies in the US. Yes, the current crisis hits the capital-owning and credit dependent class hard, but I think it’s debatable whether it filters down into the entrepreneurial class with anything like the severity you suggest. If your business is dependent primarily upon your skills and your labor and working for other people of your same class, you’re somewhat insulated from the problems of those who live and die by credit.

The vulnerable group I worry about are those who are involved in businesses which primarily cater to those who have excess wealth and spend it liberally. I think that people like Clavos who provide services to the very wealthy are somewhat vulnerable, but they identify with the rich because of the nature of their businesses, and because they are self-employed and self-reliant they have the right mindset for weathering a temporary crisis.

Dave

Workers will learn, and are learning, that there is a class war and the best solution is to resist the onslaught, to fight. Class consciousness is developing and will continue to develop.

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

Just wanted to jump in here and say that I think this is the most comments I’ve ever had on one of my articles (even the Ron Paul one). It’s interesting that upwards of 75% of them have nothing to do with the original topic.

Please understand that I’m not complaining. I just wanted to applaud this marvellous illustration of just what a vigorous, free-ranging debate forum BC Politics can be.

Long live free speech!

Carry on, everyone…

http://jetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Jet

Careful Doc, Suss has a problem with people “pimping” their article counts. It’s one of his pet peeves!

Les Slater

Dave,

“I don’t know what’s going on up where you live, but down here in Texas…”

I live in Chicago. I am currently visiting relatives in western Massachusetts. The trend towards urbanization is dramatic comparing this area where I grew up to what it is now. I see evidence of this in Chicago as well as other places I’ve lived in the past since the 60’s after leaving here.

I migrated from the country to the city. I’ve lived in or spent extensive time in a decent representation of cities and geographical regions. These included 8 of the top 11 Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the U.S.. City life is quite different than country life. I pointed out that the majority of the world’s population is now considered urban.

The one area where I lived that I found unique was the Greater Houston area. It was my home base from 2004 to 2006. My first blogging on BC was from that area. It was one of the metropolitan areas least inflated by the housing bubble leading up to the peak at that time. It seems to be one of the least affected by the current crisis. I just read in the news that Dallas had one of the lowest declines in housing prices, 3% from last year. It will be much greater affected as the crisis deepens.

I don’t think it will happen, not in America. Marx’s terminology doesn’t apply here, I’m afraid. The democratization of society argues against it. Sure, there’ll be resentment and outrage against the rich, or those at least who are deemed responsible, but I don’t think it will take the form of class warfare in the traditional sense: even the poor regard themselves as equal in any other but the economic sense. So there may be riots and looting, and destruction of property, but nothing of the sort that Marx had envisaged.

Cindy D

Primativists.

Cindy D

Roger,

…even the poor regard themselves as equal in any other but the economic sense…

This is an interesting comment. I think I might agree with it. Could you elaborate though? In what way to you think they regard themselves as equal?

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

It’s the fruit of a kind of freedom that had been made possible – believe it or not – by the capitalist system. We have never been a class-conscious society from the get go! The only division of import has been economic one – i.e., the property class at first (i.e., agrarian-based) and then industrial-based later on. But the idea of the American dream is still deeply entrenched in the American psyche – i.e., that any one can succeed and make the best of themselves – so we’re not at all like the Europeans (or the British) which still labor under class distinctions due to birth and all other factors. The problem that the poor will focus on in unfairness of the playing field, that you have to be an insider nowadays in order to succeed, in short, that the road to success is no longer contingent on your abilities but circumstances which are beyond a person’s control.

That’s what comes to mind right off the bat, Cindy.

Cindy D

Some thoughts on my post #282.

Les,

I guess your revolution comes later.

Mark,

Just for the record, I want mine to include cheeseburgers and IMAX theater

Les Slater

re 282,

With friends like that we don’t need enemies. Quite reactionary.

Les

STM

Roger: “We have never been a class-conscious society from the get go”

That’s not true Roger. Don’t get caught up in the myth of American exceptionalism. Money counts for an awful lot in the US. Money (and power, and often together) is the new class in the US – and always has been.

Sorry to shatter that one, but you’re also wrong about Europe. The class divisions exist there in the same way they do in the US these days, especially since WWII. Britain’s post-industrial, post-Maggie Thatcher meritocracy is a classc example. Even there, it’s more about money than about “class” and social standing.

Compared to Australia, which truly is egalitarian, especially in terms of how governments there over the past 100 years through an industrial/worker abirtation system has consciously moved the wages of blue and white collar workers much closer together than they are in many other places to create kind of one giant middle class (for better or worse), I found the US not that different to 18th century England.

If you have money, power, and privelege in the US, great. If not, you are just part of the masses, either doing OK with regular work and a slave to a mortgage, or struggling at the lower end of the pay scales. Not that different to most places in the developed world.

Let’s not forget that until at least the late 1960, blacks in the US were most certainly second-class citizens, literally AND figuratively, as were the Irish in the 19th century. True, recent developments show that anyone really can become president of the US just like my mum told me … and that’s good.

But like I say, mostly that myth of American exceptionalism is just that.

Cindy D

Stan,

We were having a discussion. Remember the one about East Timor? I’ve been trying to find that to reply to your post. Do you remember where it was? Thanks.

Cindy D

Roger,

“…the idea of the American dream is still deeply entrenched in the American psyche – i.e., that any one can succeed and make the best of themselves…”

Yes, I think people still believe that.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Of course you’re right in the extended sense (of the term “class”), STM, and at another level besides. As regards the former, I was using it in the context provided by Les (# 263), and that’s a rather simple point, so let me start with it first.

Of course money and power matters; you can’t accuse me of being that naive so as to fail to recognize basic facts of life. The point rather is that in America – with the exception of inherited fortunes – wealth was, is, and continues to believed to be acquired. Stories of rise from rags to riches abound, and whether they’re true or not, merely anecdotal or substantiable in fact, is besides the point (for now!) for they are deeply ingrained in the American psyche. So my first point in effect is – class distinctions based on money, power, etc., didn’t present (in the popular mind) the same kind of obstacle as those which are based on birth, for example: as regards the latter, there was nothing that could be done about it to bridge them; they were inviolable. With respect to the first-named distinction, it was believed they could be overcome. That’s the populist tradition. As to the Irish, for example, being second-class citizens, their reason for coming to America was precisely this populist idea, that in time if not they, their children at least would eventually enjoy the fruits of full-citizenship. The same with the blacks; they all hoped for and looked to the day when full civil rights and all the amenities available to all Americans would become a reality – all the while considering their lot, and quite rightly, as great injustice.

Now to the second point – the American myth as it were – of American “exceptionalism” and “American dream,” all heretofore implied. (I’ll speak to the latter at the end.) The fact that something is a myth doesn’t detract at all from its power. It’s force may well derive from the fact that you, I, other people, want to believe it. So apart now from the fact whether you or I still believe in it, I think it’s pretty much axiomatic that the great majority of Americans (and yes, blacks too, and all the immigrants, legal or illegal) still believe in it. So the level at which you’re correct is from the perspective of an outsider looking in as it were: the Americans lack class-consciousness and perhaps they ought to develop it. But from the point of view of the consumers or the believers in the myth, I believe you’re mistaken. And really, I wasn’t addressing my own sentiments in the matter – only what I take to be a general perception of the American public.

As to “American exceptionalism” lastly, I admit it is more and more difficult to hold on to this idea in light of our government’s actions and aggressions. I’d like to be able hold on it – because to some minds, in the past at least, America represented a kind of promise. See, I don’t want to lose my illusions and would like to believe. That’s why I still fight for her. But I admit, it is getting more and more difficult

Roger

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

I have just sent to long reply to STM. Tell me what you think.

Roger

Mark Eden

An ‘Anarchist Manifesto’ is an oxymoron.

Cindy D

Roger,

I am working on it. I think I have to go back and read some.

Cindy D

Mark,

Even as a simple declaration of intent? It sort of shocked me a little. But, then I thought, it’s only one group of voices. It isn’t representative. But, if it had represented my ideas I wonder if I would have been less stunned.

I am happy to see some effort to organize anything. What do you think about organization.

What I saw on Monday did not inspire much faith. Unless the goal is to stand around on streets holding signs for eternity.

Or in reality, not holding signs. Because if I had not made any, we would have looked more like a few people loitering around the travel bureau for no apparent reason.

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

STM –

You know that I’m usually first in line to point out America’s faults, but here I must defend her in two points.

America is noisy, messy, often unfair, and given to hanging our dirty laundry out for all and sundry to see, but when it comes to being a class-insensitive society, overall I don’t think any other country on earth can hold a candle to us.

Why? Because part and parcel of any measure of a nation’s class-consciousness is the level of racism – overt or covert – within that nation.

Can you imagine black man only one generation removed from Kenya being elected as president of France? Or chancellor of Germany? Or prime minister of Australia?

Perhaps you could point out that Sonia Gandhi could have been prime minister of India if she had wanted, and then there was Fujimori of Peru…but I submit to you that these are instances of what I call reverse racism.

When I travel overseas to non-white countries, I normally receive significant preference to the locals. Sure, this might be expected for tourists in general, but certainly not to the degree I’ve seen. Perhaps the best example is in the Philippines, where whites are sometimes referred to as “blusils” – pronounced ‘blue seals’ – which hearkens back to the blue seal that one would see on a Marlboro cigarette pack…a mark of quality.

What does this have to do with ‘reverse racism’, with Sonia Gandhi of India and Alberto Fujimori of Peru? Easy. Races that are less successful have a tendency to more easily accept people from races that are more successful. That’s NOT a politically-correct statement, but I believe it to be true.

And that brings me to the point that proves America’s exceptionalism: in no other STABLE major nation in human history has the people democratically elected a leader from what is often seen as a less-successful race.

In the majority of American cities, seeing mixed-race couples doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. Mixed-race children are an everyday fact of life now. Children of illegal immigrants can be politically successful, too, as Ben Cayetano proved when he was elected governor of Hawaii back in the 90’s. Can any other nation say the same of the children of their illegal immigrants? I don’t think so.

Yes, there are parts of America that are still quite racist – I grew up in one such area – but we’re certainly improving.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Well, Glenn, at least there is hope. And Obams’s landslide victory – in spite of George Dubya’s unpopularity – is the proof of the pudding.

Cindy D

Roger,

Okay, my opinion could change. Some things I think so far:

I think myth is a very powerful thing. The part of the culture with the power (money) has their story embedded into the record. See the thread where they’re making GWB into a hero so the myth of American exceptionalism can continue on in history books.

I believe that people want to be part of a community. It is adaptive (although counterproductive for you as an individual where the community is lying to you) to accept the patriotic position–to whatever degree. And the range is wide. The liberal to the fundamentalist who believes in manifest destiny.

I think that as long as the dominant culture can inspire and keep that myth alive, it will be successful to whatever degree in perpetuating its purpose which is maintaining the status quo.

I think that the economic crisis, as well as the wars and violence is affecting people. I think people are becoming disillusioned with the myth. As they become moreso, I think that they will begin to look around for solutions that will work. They will find support. Support is already there.

I think there will be a sharing of information and a movement in a direction. The consciousness will change.

“I don’t want to lose my illusions and would like to believe. That’s why I still fight for her. But I admit, it is getting more and more difficult…”

Keep trying, you’ll get there.

Mark Eden

Cindy, what is it that you see our Depressed Anarchist organizing in the Manic Manifesto? Such organization without an object tends to take on a life and dogma of its own. Keep it ad hoc, and leave Cindy’s the cheeseburgers out of it, I say.

Mark

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

STM –

The second point – opportunity.

America – I will be an expatriate someday, but I’ll always love and defend her (and occasionally yell at her).

America is called “The Land of Opportunity”. Read that carefully – it’s NOT ‘success’ or ‘fairness’ or ‘comfort’ or even ‘common sense’…but opportunity. This is an integral part of our national psyche – without opportunity, America is not America. We are the land of CAN…which is why my son is very careful not to say “can’t” where I can hear it!

Barack Obama said in his acceptance speech that in no other nation in the world is his story even possible…and you must agree that he is right!

It’s not just Obama, but it’s Bill Gates, the most successful college dropout in history. It’s Oprah, and the guys who developed Google. It’s my own son – also the non-white child of a one-time illegal immigrant – applying for PhD. studies at Harvard and actually having a chance of being accepted! And YES, I’m a doggone proud dad who just had to put that in there!

America’s faults – our continuing struggle against racism and other forms of intolerance, and our national Achilles’ heel of hubris – are there for all to see…but the most important aspect of America is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, the rights to life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness…and what is pursuit without opportunity to achieve?

STM, please don’t take these last two posts as inordinate boasting on my part. My last years will be happily spent outside America’s borders. My country has done many wrongs and continues to do so. Point out the things we do wrong and – if you’re right, I’ll join you in pointing out her faults. But the exceptional American dreams of equality and opportunity for all…are very much alive!

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

I agree with you, Cindy. We’re learning the hard way that our government, big business and powers that be have their own agenda in the making, an agenda which is contrary to what we’ve all along been led to believe. And in a way it’s a good thing – the crisis, that is! At least things our getting out in the open for every one who is willing to take an honest and second look: that we’ve got lots of work to do. So yes, I am optimistic and will continue to be so for as long as possible.

I’ll comment some more later on, but I’ve got to get back to writing. I don’t know how all of yous can be so glued to these threads all day long. How can you hope to get any work done if you most of your time is spent on hashing and rehashing things to no end? Is it that some people are uncertain of their positions, not knowing exactly where they’re at, that they need validation from their peers. In that case, they should do their homework fist and then come into the forum. (I address some of these issues in my piece in the Sci/Tech section, “To Fellow Bloggers,” to which I have yet to hear a single response. I would have thought that most of us are better prepared if we are to spread the message and change the world, but I may have been wrong. It looks as though we’re more intent on changing the fellow-blogger’s point of view. I think this is kind of misdirected!)

So I’ll talk to you later and Happy New Year.

Roger

Cindy D

Mark,

I see them as organizing from their own perspective. That is, roughly, that everything needs to be taken back to the stone age. It’s all no good.

As far as taking my cheeseburgers out of the picture. I don’t get it yet. It took me only months to get the one where you challenged my slavish devotion to expertise and my own embrace of and projection of authority. (Changing that is a long term project I’m sure.)

This one should go faster. There’s always hope.

Cindy D

Happy New Year Roger.

I personally wouldn’t follow that leadership you are offering.

Les Slater

“…everything needs to be taken back to the stone age.”

The majority of the population on earth would die. There is no going back.

Les Slater

btw, that’s one of the reasons I branded them reactionaries. Their schema calls for a reactionary utopia.

Mark Eden

(Cindy, that part of my comment was directed at those who would ‘organize’ a revolution by banning meat.)

Cindy D

Les,

I got that part about being reactionary. But, don’t they just want to go themselves and live like that? Surely they are not calling for everyone to choose that?

They say, for example to wreck OR seize the means of production. Obviously they are not interested in seizing it. So, I see it as then pursuing their own course. Which is to go off and live primitively.

I did not see that as implying everyone should do the same. I see them as advancing their own beliefs. I don’t agree with them. But, what I was saying to Mark is that I am happy to see some outreach to the larger world. I see it as a organizing of communication–not plan. I was trying to imply that with my cheeseburger comment.

Organization: By this I mean nothing more than organization of communication channels. Personally, why should I mind if 1000s of people want to take to the wilderness.

I didn’t think they were speaking for everyone.

Cindy D

Ah Mark

Thank you for saving my dinner.

Cindy D

I hope they weren’t. It is hard to imagine they are even speaking for a majority of their own local compatriots.

Cindy D

RE # 299,

Roger,

Additionally, where I mentioned this: I not only think it is counterproductive to one as an individual. I also think it is counterproductive to others–who have all been turned into competing individuals. It prevents them from establishing an authentic community based on things that serve the whole community’s real needs rather than what we have–one based on serving the desires of the few that debase and use the rest of the community to achieve their goals.

Les Slater

“I hope they weren’t. It is hard to imagine they are even speaking for a majority of their own local compatriots.”

They weren’t speaking for much of anybody. They were however calling on the world of workers and farmers to revolt under the prescript of their manifesto. They said explicitly: ‘The World Revolution must be against civilisation’

Pure reactionary rubbish.

Cindy D

Les,

Yeah, I see that now. Oh well.

Thanks.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

I have no idea what you’re talking about in #304 and #311. What leadership? I was only offering my own appraisal as how I see the American public at large. They’re still under the spell of the myth but their whole world is sinking from under their feet. Their government is letting them down and their beliefs are being shuttered. They don’t know what to believe anymore. That’s what is happening right now. So what are you talking about, Cindy? Aren’t you taking something out of context? Please explain.

Cindy D

Roger,

Let me address only #304 for the moment.

I don’t know how all of yous can be so glued to these threads all day long.

Why would anyone need to justify their personal circumstances to anyone else?

How can you hope to get any work done if you most of your time is spent on hashing and rehashing things to no end?

It depends on what sort of work you mean. What sort of work do you mean?

Is it that some people are uncertain of their positions, not knowing exactly where they’re at, that they need validation from their peers. In that case, they should do their homework fist and then come into the forum.

1) I wouldn’t trust anyone who has no uncertainty regarding their own ideas.

2) The homework you speak of is, for me, a process best done by interacting with people. I have read books all my life. Only people–live ones (even ones on the internet)–challenging my presumptions and ideas help me move forward in my thinking. Books and films are limited in their ability to answer my questions or tell me I might be wrong. I’m often wrong.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Ok, I get your point. We all need discussion and feedback – but this is ongoing to no end. You also need time to reflect and think. And for the most part, haven’t you noticed, people are only rehashing their own positions. Very few change their mind, and if you’re one those, it’s great but you’re an exception. So no, Cindy. I’m not at all against discussion and dialogue if it’s constructive and going somewhere. But I haven’t seen too much of it here, yet, except here and there. I’m sorry if I offended you by my remarks. I certainly didn’t mean to.

See, I wasn’t aware that I was entering “the Univesity of the Air.” The Blogcritics haven’t billed themselves in such a way. Perhaps that’s why I’m kind of pissed. The pieces we submit should be pretty much complete and thought-through. The hard work has got to be done in silence, as part of the dialogue with oneself and his/her conscience. Then, and only then there should be time for criticism. But I don’t want to be dealing with ideas that are half-baked simply because people are in a hurry to get things published for the sole purpose of being viewed and reviewed. As I said, I regard blogging as a serious business. As a group, we represent a very bright segment of the population and it’s our responsibility to enlighten and educate some of the less fortunate fellow Americans who, for lack of time, energy, and great many other reasons, need to be better informed as to the kind of issues we’re facing as a country and a nation, so as to enable them to make better decisions and nagivate more surely in these uncertain waters. So under the circumstances, and given the objective I have in mind, I do have to say that undue attention spent here on the threads – while serving a purpose to a point – if taken to an extreme is counterproductive.

Roger

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Roger – I may not agree with you on everything, but #316 was well said.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

The sooner you’ll realize that most of our “opinions” and “reasoned arguments” are in essence rationalizations of our basic emotional makeup, the better. That’s what the truth of the expression, “You’ve got to win hearts before you can win minds” pertains to. Most often, we can’t help but espousing our emotions, and in truth, emotions rule.

The trick is to get your emotions in order – think highly and as nobly as possible, and the reason will follow.

Roger

STM

Glenn: “when it comes to being a class-insensitive society, overall I don’t think any other country on earth can hold a candle to us”.

Glenn (and Roger) … don’t mistake my gentle pointing out of perceived flaws for nasty criticism. I’ll let you know when I’m getting nasty. I’m not an America hater, but I do think your friends need to remind Americans of the odd thing sometimes otherwise there’s a tendency for our yankee cousins to think America exists in a vacuum.

As for Glenn’s comment above, you’re wrong Glenn.

If we’re talking about the western democracies and comparing them to the US, Australia (and you’ve been here Glenn so you know!) is way less class sensitive than America, way less …

Any notion of a class system – based on money, power or influence – is almost a hated thing in this country.

Think about the reasons! This is a place founded by gaolers and convicts. What, did anyone think when we got our own way that we’d have a love of authority figures or of anyone – yes, anyone, even a Prime Minister – who gets the notion into his or her head that they’re better than anyone else.

So of course, I notice it very readily elsewhere. It is one of the things I first noticed when I went to America. I thought it would be the same, but what I saw was in America was an incredible amount of class division.

Sorry guys … we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.

It’s one area where many Americans can’t be objective, and it’s propogating the myth.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Don’t feel a lone ranger. I’m also not from here, STM.

I’m sure Glenn can answer for himself. My point had to do with so-called “American Dream,” still in operation as far as most Americans are concerned – although many novelists and fiction writers have long addressed the possibility that it is no longer in effect. We’re quickly approaching the times, however, when even the general public may soon not be able to accept it and what then? The whole notion and idea of America as promise will disappear. I’m not saying it’s a good thing or bad, only that perhaps I’d still like to be able to hold on to the idea of America as “The Great Experiment.” Do you want to to abandon my hope?

Lucky country might be close to the truth, though. Having travelled extensively, there are few places I’d rather be … including the US.

Not because I don’t like the US. I love the place and I could live there easily if I had to, likewise the UK.

It’s just that all things considered, life’s way better here IMO and one of things I love is that it’s a much fairer society, and therefore seems happier – overall.

The fact that it’s a nation of migrants much like the US, and people from all over the world, including from Europe and the Americas (there’s a lot of Americans here now too), are knocking down the door to get in really tells the story. One in four Australians weren’t born here.

Not perfect by a long shot, but probably largely due to location and climate it’s as close as you’ll get with a government/governments running something.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

And yes, STM, it is a myth and a very powerful one!

Cindy D

Roger,

You didn’t offend me at all.

I’m not sure I understand why you care how long anyone spends here or what they get out of it? Or how many times they go around in circles in a discussion.

If you were looking for a more scholarly place to publish, I can recommend one. This isn’t it.

I’m not sure what expectations you have. This site is more (sometimes less in rare cases) a forum for free speech.

That’s my take on it. I like it here.

Cindy D

I should have said, “This isn’t it.” thank whatever.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

I must admit, STM, that I am baffled somewhat by the Europeans. I’m in the backward regions of Kentucky now, no civilization (in my sense of the word) to speak of, etc., etc. I had just run into a couple – she from Netherlands, he too, though born in US. And we spoke of American “exceptionalism.” I agreed that it’s getting more and more difficult to hold on to that idea for a great variety of reasons – US aggressive stance, imperialism, situation at home, greed running rampant, and I could go on and on. He, however, had been against it from the very start. When asked why he’s still in US, he spoke of money, etc., etc., When I really pressed, he had no answer and we laughed it off. So you see, coming in here only for material reasons doesn’t make sense to me – there’s got to be more to deciding to live somewhere that goes beyond comfort, convenience, any of those things. You’ve got to believe in something, and at the time of my arrival, I did. Whether I would come to US in this day and age, I’m not that sure.

But to the point. It was possible, once, to believe in a kind of “exceptionalism,” not by way of offering excuses but as a prototype. In a sense, we had created a kind of model of an egalitatian society (took close to 200 years to fully bloom) which remains the pattern. And if Australia and other countries are doing well or better, so much better for them. But America had started it all!

Roger

Cindy D

Re: #318

Roger,

You seem to have figured everything out. In that case I’ll simply await your next illuminating article or post to show me what I’m doing wrong.

STM

And yes, Glenn, we could easily have a black PM here. There have been black governors, senators, MPs, members of the judiciary, etc etc, and since many people in this country are of mixed race going back anything up to two centuries, I suspect we could already have had one. Who knows?

Certainly we aren’t an anglo society, and even prior to this given that over 40 per cent of Australians claim to have direct Irish background, we’ve always described ourselves as anglo-celtic, not anglo-saxon.

In that respect these days, as a melting pot, it’s not that different to the US. There’s at least a new-found comittment to equal rights that actually translates from hot air into reality.

My son is part aboriginal, went to one of the top boys’ boarding schools in the southern hemisphere on part bursary, played rugby at a high level – a game that’s supposed to be class-ridden. lol – and is now off to university this year (2009), on his merits.

Cindy … I will try to track down that Timor thread when I get into work in a couple of hours.

Cindy D

BTW I’m not offended. I should have said what I and apparently everyone else is doing wrong.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

I don’t care if other people do it. I was only expressing my personal preferences. And no, I don’t want scholarly journals, etc. I want to reach “the man in the street.” I should hope that all of you have similar objectives. (But I see that you’re resisting my message. I hoped to get through and reach understanding between you and I.)

Roger

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

Why do you take it upon yourself to speak for others? You don’t need to. And I wasn’t trying to say that you’re doing anything wrong, only that this kind of ongoing 24 hours a day engagement I wasn’t prepared for. If that’s what you need, who am I to tell you you shouldn’t.

Roger

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

Regarding #326,

No Cindy! I haven’t figured everything out and I’ll stumble just like every one else from time to time since I’m a human. But I know that my heart is in the right place. And that, you must admit, I don’t need to learn from the forum.

Roger

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

PS: You’re still resisting. I really was hoping to get through.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

STM,

“we’re not an anglo society” (I believe you meant, predominantly).

Now, that is a recommendation, for there goes a certain arrogance and a whole bunch of other traits. But you must admit at least one point: a certain tradition and respect for law qua law. That is an important building block.

Roger

STM

Roger, I think you’re misreading what I’m about here.

I’m not saying that America isn’t a land of opportunity. Patently, it is.

I have my own views on the American revolution. I believe that far from being an oppressed society, it actually enjoyed personal freedoms, a lifestyle and standard of living superior to most places by the late 1700s (pre-revolution), and people with money, power and influence in the 13 colonies saw the writing on the wall in regard to slavery following the ruling of the King’s Bench court, and the rise of the abolitionist movement in England and decided to do something about it to shore up their own positions.

The catchcry of liberty was a nonsense IMO … especially since most of the laws enumerated in the constitution already existed under the laws of the colonies at the time, which the founding fathers admitted (which is why we don’t have a bill of rights in this country but the criminal law system and the laws on free speech, the right to congregate and protest, etc are virtually identical. Our libel laws are tougher, but the other side of the coin is that people have a right not to be defamed and libelled on a whim and have their lives and their living ruined).

The reason I believe that about the myth of the revolution – which is the original myth of American exceptionalism and its basis IMO – is that those crying longest and hardest about liberty and the equal rights of men were the very same ones who denied people their rights as human beings for no other reason than the colour of their skin.

Jefferson must be included in this. I still have no idea why the man is held in such awe by Americans.

Anyway, Roger, what I was really getting at is that in some ways, other countries offer their own citizens more fairness – and equal rights.

There are no wait staff on this country earning a couple of dollars an hour and praying for a big night of tips to pay the rent. That’s just an example.

They must be paid a decent wage, with penalty rates for night and weekend work built into the equation.

So while America was still blowing hot air about liberty and equality 100 years ago, the government and unions and courts got together in this country got together to bring Aussie workers the best wages and conditions anywhere. To me, that’s a concrete move: people can bleat on about opportunity, libery and equality all they like, but what it really translates too in the majority of cases in the US is a lucky break if you get one.

You know as well as I do that a teenager from a ritzy suburb of LA with wealthy parents has way more chance of succeeding than a black or hispanic kid from south Los Angles. That is the way it is. It’s true here, too, and the treatment of aborigines in this country is a similar stain on us. Every bit as bad. The great Aussie myth of a “Fair go for everyone” is just as much as myth in that respect, as clearly if you of a certain skin colour in this country, you didn’t get a fair go. It’s changed, but old attitudes linger.

What I feel about Americans on this subject of exceptionalism is that they sometimes spend so much time believing their own bullshit without question, they end up not seeing the real truth of what their own society is about. Myths are great, but if a nation’s whole collective wellbeing is built on myth, at some point it’s going to come tumbling down.

This is America’s failing … until now at least, for the most part – and there are always exceptions and this doesn’t apply to all Americans – there has been an inability to look at anything beyond America, no understanding of what it’s really about anyway as a society, and no understanding of its place in the world and how it came to be that way.

It can be very frustrating at times as a non-American dealing with Americans because of that.

I have had educated people in the US suggesting to me in all seriousness when discussing the law for instance that it was great that Australia was able to follow America’s example on such things as jury trials, the right to silence, miranda-style rights and the presumption of innocence. Seriously, they believed this is where it came from.

That’s just one example … there are many more I can give. The most infamous is how the US has bailed everyone out of countless wars. When you ask what they were, no one can tell you but it’s a frustrating myth. It makes people very angry, mainly because it’s nonsense and an arrogance that has its basis in real ignorance. Only in America, too, will your hear people saying the US won the War of 1812 or the Vietnam War, because tactically they weren’t defeated. It’s bizarre, this inability to look at history with clear eyes.

Then just when you think you might tear your hair out, you meet Americans who turn all those notions on their heads. Which on the other side of the coin is why I like Americans generally.

Which is also all great cause for hope that the leader of the free world will continue – after Bush’s debacle – to excercise its role responsibly and bring hope to those without it, and help to those who need it.

Right now, we all need America to really live up to what it says it about. Americans need that too, because this modern world is largely of America’s making, and therefore America’s role in it goes way beyond the shores of the United States.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

STW,

I have to give it a more thorough read before I respond more fully.

Definitely no disagreement with your main points. We have been painstakingly slow in affording the ideas in the Constitution and the Bill of Right to eventually trickle down to the mass of citizenry – pick any example or area you want. Just for one, the whole idea of Welfare Capitalism had originated in Sweden at the turn of last century.
So I am not about to argue that we’ve been on the cutting edge all along – far from it – and now lagging behind.

Besides, the myth had always served the mythmakers rather well. It was an integral part of the attraction – so as to bring immigrants for cheap labor, etc., etc. So no, I’m not certain I can believe in “exceptionalism” any more, except that I yearn for us being true to the ideals upon which, in spite of the founding fathers and early practitioners, this country was founded upon.

This is just a schematic response, and I’ll have to read your comment more closely. But you must admit there is an art to “misreading” (Howard Blum, for instance)

I did not use any terminology that was exclusively Marxist. I made no sweeping predictions.

My starting point was sort of an agreement with Dave’s observations about ‘a class that works’. I explicitly pointed out that this working class was not conscious of its own existence as a class.

I briefly sketched an outline of the history and development of that class to the point to which it is at now.

I ended with ‘Workers will learn, and are learning, that there is a class war and the best solution is to resist the onslaught, to fight. Class consciousness is developing and will continue to develop.’

That’s no description of any complete realization in consciousness of a class. It is only pointing to a beginning of that development.

You start out by first denying that there is a developed class consciousness and give some reasons why this is so and imply that these reasons will prevent such from developing.

Reading your subsequent posts I see you are ambivalent as to whether you would like to see any development in the understanding of those I would call the working class.

It is clear that you hope that the development of democratic capitalism will resolve some of the problems you clearly see developing. I also detect great doubt. You are just hoping.

Les

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

I suppose you’re right, Les, concerning last two points for one and the same reason: I think re-instituting “class struggle” would be a step backwards.

Which isn’t to say I’m against “consciousness-raising” (on the individual’s level) or “class action” in specific instances – like suits, or on specific issues. But I think we’ve reached a point of development in civilization (and Western culture in particular) where “consciousness” on a group level – concerning some general issues like exploitation (and any number of issues pertaining to employer-employee relations) is too simplistic to reflect the riches of the Western personality.

Another way of saying this, perhaps, is that in some cultures (and America is an example), we’ve become “too sophisticated” in a manner of speaking – and I’m not sure yet whether to mean it facetiously or with a straight fact, both perhaps – for this kind of reduction to have much of a popular appeal. Which isn’t to say this couldn’t constitute a Marxist critique, only my appraisal of reality. For better of worse, we’ve become “individualized.” That’s one of the conditions and or consequences of modernity.

And yes, I do hope – in fact, believe – that institutions of democratic capitalism will prevail, although there will definitely be a much greater need to curb pure greed; so the system which will develop will be “socialistic” to an extent” – a kind of democratic socialism,” if you can stomach this oxymoron.

To revert to the “primitive” Marxist categories under the circumstances would not only be – in my opinion – highly unlikely but also reactionary. Again, which isn’t to say it’s impossible: only that we’d have to go through great social catastrophes and a breakdown of society on a scale we haven’t seen before for the scenario you’re suggesting to become feasible.

RN

PS: I’m presently working on a piece, so if you’ll respond to my comments, I may not get back to you immediately.

Cindy D

Roger,

I considered this: But I see that you’re resisting my message. (in #318) I hoped to get through and reach understanding between you and I.

I think you are right. Probably I’m exemplifying your message. It’s an interesting point. I think one I didn’t consider. Possibly very helpful. Thanks for it.

Why do you take it upon yourself to speak for others?

Did I? It wasn’t my intention. You spoke about what “people” are doing. I defended what people are doing. In saying “what I and everyone else is doing wrong”, my intention was to assure you I knew it was a general statement, not a personal one.

If that’s what you need, who am I to tell you you shouldn’t.

Good. I am sure everyone you meet will appreciate that as much as I do. (I’m speaking for everyone now.)

But I know that my heart is in the right place. And that, you must admit, I don’t need to learn from the forum.

P.S. If I don’t get it just keep trying.

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

STM –

That’s one thing I do love about discussions like this – I learn things I didn’t know, and sometimes I find that what was ‘knowledge’ was actually only assumption.

Okay, I’ll take your rebuke and say that I might be wrong about Australia. On the class-consciousness issue, I still suspect that as a whole we’re less race-conscious. This is not only because of Obama’s election (the most telling point of which was his victory in the almost completely-white Iowa), but also because of the stir that the young Aboriginal girl made on the Australian Olympic team in 2000. I have to ask myself if Australia is less race-conscious than America, then why did her achievements become such a big deal?

But as I said, I could be wrong about Australia…and please bear in mind that I’d personally love to live there – Tasmania is the most beautiful place I’ve seen next to Hawaii, and the people are wonderful. Besides, any place where 40% of the people claim Irish ancestry must by default have better beer! My own ancestors come from the Maddens of County Cork, thank you very much!

But my wife is cool to the idea, so we won’t. Bummer. I did look forward to the beer….

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

I’ll get back to you soon after I’ve made some progress on my piece. I. too, have things to add and come clean so to speak. I haven’t given up on you.

Roger

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

I have to ask myself if Australia is less race-conscious than America, then why did her achievements become such a big deal?

I can only think it must have been the size of the stage (the Olympics) she was performing on. She was hardly the first-ever world-class Aboriginal athlete. Remember Evonne Goolagong, the tennis star who won seven Grand Slam singles titles in the 1970s and early 80s?

There have also been numerous rugby stars of indigenous extraction, but you wouldn’t hear much about them in the US. (Mal Meninga and Wendell Sailor are the best known, although strictly speaking Meninga is Polynesian and Sailor is a Torres Strait Islander.)

Back to Cathy Freeman: I would make one further observation. The big deal about her was not so much her ethnicity as that she won gold in a track and field event – the blue riband event of the Olympic Games, on her home turf, in a sport where Australia historically has not performed all that strongly.

Same deal, really, with Fanny Halkia winning the 400 hurdles in Athens. Greece is not known for its all-conquering track performances either, so to have a home-grown Olympic champion was quite momentous.

Cindy D

Dave,

I submitted my application. Under my pen name. I need to go over my story once more for a final edit before submitting it. But I’ll do that part tomorrow as I’m seeing stars.

I don’t know how anyone does this. It’s worse than torture.

Was it always easy for you Dave?

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Cindy, I’ve been writing thousands of words a week since I was about 12, so it’s sort of become ingrained. But I write this kind of stuff because it’s easier than writing fiction, which is what I really ought to be writing.

I’ll keep an eye out for your first article.

Dave

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

OK, Cindy, are you there?

1) I was under misapprehension as to this site. Since I see what it is, it is great in many respects: it’s like being wired to everyone.

2) I was only wondering out laud – and only to you, not everybody else.

3) I don’t have any desire or ambition to either lead or be followed: I was only making an appeal.

4) Right after our last dialog, I had occurred to me why I sort of overreacted. I had just gotten off a relationship that was mainly e-mail-based (though we also worked at the same place). In fact, wrote a book about it (“Love & Murder in Cyberspace: Ruminations from a Boiler Room”). So I see now why I was reacting so strongly.

By the way, I’m glad to hear that you and Dave have ambitions as a fiction writer. Perhaps we can all get together on this and talk some more. I was, as a matter of fact, of the mind to contact Eric re: possibility of expanding this site – or establishing a new branch, as it were, to include fictional literature. They have a site in UK, I believe it’s called The Front or something like that, in which the prospective authors evaluate each others work, offer criticism, etc; and they’re also connected with publishing houses. The problem with the Front, it takes forever until they get back to you, they seem so overloaded.
Is there a possibility of something like this happening here with Blogcritics, especially if they are connected with publishers and literary agents? It would be great, for that’s only problem I have with fiction: once you’re done, you have to devote so much time and effort trying to peddle your work and I just refuse to do it: it takes away from the creative process. Other than that, fiction is so much more rewarding – to me! You can say things you couldn’t otherwise when working with more pedestrian formats. So take it up with him and may be we’ll be able to set something up.)

So that’s it for now.

Roger

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

STM,

A follow-up to an earlier thread.

What I was going to say, I’m glad you brought up the matter of America as the origin and, what comes with it, the responsibility we have to work these problems out – not I.

I definitely agree with you there: the whole world is watching.

Have I missed anything?

Roger

Cindy D

Hi Roger I’ll read it now.

Cindy D

Roger,

I understand. I’m sure I overreacted (out of character as that might be–umm).

I like this blog because I would normally never get to hear the views of some of its inhabitants. For example, my cousin is much like Dave Nalle. At Thanksgiving I had to tell him I was stopping our conversation for the sake of everyone who didn’t need to hear a fight.

It’s easier to fight with Dave. And because there isn’t the urgency that face to face conversation inspires in people, I can say fully what I mean without being cut off.

And by the way. I used to have the same conception as regards email communications. I was so elated to have discovered a medium where you can think first before putting your foot in the mouth. So when the whole thing got busted, I was in for a great shock, because our communications were so perfect. That’s when I realized that there is no substitute for person-to-person contacts, there just isn’t!

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

How?

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

I see. You got on my website. So ignore the question.

Cindy D

Roger,

Well, I’ve had experiences on both sides. I was at a site for two + years when I was a day trader. When I met a few of the people, all but one were everything I expected.

I talked with some people, whom I never met (thankfully), who played out as pretty creepy.

Now you’re getting me interested in your book.

Cindy D

Besides, I live in a Republican semi-rural area. Where here am I going to find Communists and Anarchists to change my life?

Les Slater

“Is it that some people are uncertain of their positions, not knowing exactly where they’re at, that they need validation from their peers.”

Projection!

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

No, just speculation. And it might be true of some!

Les Slater

I’ve read all of your posts in this thread starting with your 283. I see your doubts. Your 283 was essentially reflexive.

I’ve been tempted to use the term fragile to describe your convictions. Then I read a chapter from your book. It all fits.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

So was I, on Wall Street, years back before grad school and shot-gun marriages (only kidding).

I, too, live in a backward area now. I allude to it in my upcoming piece, “Political Quiz.” I don’t know how much more I can stand it.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Les,

How did you get onto/unto it(damn, I can never tell a difference unless I keep on referring to a dictionary)?

Cindy D

Oh BTW Roger, Dave and I were only discussing my non-fiction article.

Les Slater

Are you referring as to how I found your book? The same way Cindy did, googled the title.

Les Slater

“I don’t know how much more I can stand it.”

That fits.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Some beliefs and convictions can be(come) fragile; nothing wrong with that. Everything is a process.
However, much of my writing is geared to an audience and as particularistic as the occasion may demand. To wit, my intent always is to persuade, to win people to my side – which is not to say it’s just rhetoric). And sometimes I must do it more subtly, sometimes less so. The object, as far as I see, is to find as much common ground as possible. Only then one can move on to “bigger and better things.”

I’m doing it, Les, but I must say I’m rather biased against mathematical/logical models.
John Searle (from UC Berkley) “Speech Acts” is kind of my idea, based on J. Austin’s earlier work at Oxford. I have had quite an extensive training in philosophy, especially Analytic Philosophy and Philosophy of Language, but truly, I’m a Wittgensteinian. (although some of Choamsky’s work in linquistics is interesting).
Anyway, I’m giving it a stab.

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Cindy – “Besides, I live in a Republican semi-rural area. Where here am I going to find Communists and Anarchists to change my life?”

If that’s Texas, I can’t help you. Apparently, we who live on the Left Coast need passports to go there now….

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Austin is the only place! I hear it’s even more liberal than Berkley.

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Roger – concerning #345

Is there a possibility of [a section for prospective authors] happening here with Blogcritics, especially if they are connected with publishers and literary agents? It would be great, for that’s only problem I have with fiction: once you’re done, you have to devote so much time and effort trying to peddle your work and I just refuse to do it: it takes away from the creative process.

AMEN!

Dave? What do you think? Could we as a group convince Eric to expand BC for this?

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Aroung here I can’t swing a cat without hitting an anarchist or a communist. But then I do live just outside of Austin.

Dave

Cindy D

Glenn,

I live in NJ. Although off and on I lived in the suburban L.A. area. (I only consider states with oceans attached to them.)

My first year of college in L.A. I lived with compatriots. A year was a long time then.

I don’t think I could bear to live in Texas. I need an ocean. It’s essential.

What state are you in?

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

I think it would be a great idea, Glenn. Judging by the quality of writing one sees here, I’m certain there are many who write in other genres as well. And it would be a cinch to expand, even on a piecemeal basis. The key is, as far as I’m concerned, contacts/connections with publishers and agents. But I’m rather new here and I’m in no position to rock the boat. Perhaps some of you could get together and start a brainstorm. I’d definitely be for it.

Heck! Dave himself had expressed a (latent?) desire to be a fiction writer. How about it, Dave?

Cindy D

Okay, everyone will please keep your remarks to yourself.

How can I help it if I didn’t know Austin was close to the gulf?

I was thinking of the larger part of Texas.

Les Slater

“I need an ocean. It’s essential.”

Not an ocean but there’s the Gulf of Mexico.

Cindy D

Dave,

Where I live, people are afraid to put Obama bumper stickers on their cars.

That’s why I’m going to Ft. Lauderdale, eventually.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,
You’re only a stone’s throw from NY. What the hell are you complaining about.
Nothing beats the part of KY where I’m in. It’s an emotional desert. I’d would outside my place in Alameda, CA, and right off the bat run into 20-30 people I knew – whether I cared for it or not. And I bitched about it. I never realized how lucky I was. Now I miss even those I never really cared for. Here, you actually have to go out of your way just to meet someone – unless you join a church, of course. It’s Christian County. It’s like I had entered a time-travel machine and ended up 150 or so years back.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Cindy, in a way that’s better. If some of your neighbors are so reactionary, at least you can rouse them and something will develop. Here they’re just unto themselves, like Zombies. There’s only home and church, no other centers in their life.

Cindy D

Yikes KY! Not for me. I go to NY (1-1 1/2 hours) but it’s very expensive just to go in for a day.

I’m going to Philly this month too. It’s about 3 hours.

Cindy D

I don’t know my neighbors. Their all rich people. They buy 1/2 million dollar houses on my lake to use as summer places. (My husband built this house in the 70s.)

I was invited to a party once. Not my cup of tea. My one neighbor is a snob who called my car uncivilized. He likes to shoot me passive-aggressive jabs whenever possible.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Any nearby town where you live, however decrepit?
Even Hoboken would be like heaven to me.

Cindy D

Oh my, you are desperate…

Cindy D

This area was farmland and countryside. Rich people came in, bought up the land around the farms and developed it into ugly communities with pretentious names that make them feel so special.

They started going to the town meetings complaining about everything from the smell of cows to my brother-in-laws wood lot. (A wood lot in the country is unattractive apparently.)

The taxes are outrageous. The services non-existent. My road has potholes. The taxes are over 10k/year.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Dave? What do you think? Could we as a group convince Eric to expand BC for this?

If you’re talking about fiction, then probably not. BC expressly doesn’t publish or deal with fiction and there are specialized sites which handle it better.

If we’re talking non-fiction then I think it’s a more realistic possibility through going into partnership with a publisher or starting our own publishing wing. Contemporary technology makes the former pretty easy to do.

Much of my background is in publishing and I have a project I’m developing for a publishing house designed to take writers from the web to print, but right now it’s on the back burner. It’s something I might move forward with if there were authors out there desperately looking for a publisher. I’ve got a placeholder page with some basic info at Octavo Press.

Alternatively we’d need to find a publisher already doing what I’m considering, or hook up with an agent who is savvy enough to have some idea how to market our work to major publishers.

With POD technology book publishing is a total jungle these days, but it’s also much easier than it has been in years to get new books into a distribution channel which can produce reasonable returns.

Dave

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

My sister and brother-in-law are millionaires. Sure, they lost lots on money recently, but their assets are still at 6 million or so – a condo in Aspen, besides, and a $2 mil one in Sarasota – not to mention their mansion here. But I tell you the true – it’s a wasted life. They’re professionals of course – doctors, he working about 18 hours a day. But aside from that, there is nothing. It’s OK for some people, I guess, who are recluse by nature. But I’ll never understand my sister. She had come from the same cosmopolitan background as I and sacrificed it all just for material things. Even if they go to Italy or Europe 5-6 times a year, it’s no compensation for the kind of life available to her here (for over twenty years). And guess what, with all that wealth, she’s really unhappy. I have a richer(at present, only) inner life than she. Money can’t buy you happiness.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Cindy, what kind of car do you have that it would be described as “uncivilized”? Sounds like fun.

Around here the millionaires are all liberals, so it’s a bit disorienting to hear tales of places where the social order fits a more traditional model.

I had a lot of money at one time. Enough to do whatever I wanted. I shopped out of boredom. Just bought things to try to create a lifestyle. I was ruled by depression. I did however feel quite special and above others. You know, others who had to work.

Cindy D

Dave,

I have a Honda Element. Not what I would chose now. But, five years ago I was only moving from the luxury car stage to something different.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

I always enjoyed the money I made; it’d spend it of course and enjoy my lifestyle. But it was never an addiction. I was more motivated by running my own business, providing employment to people,the architecture of the business, I mean, than the fruits themselves – i.e., money. If more people were like that, rather than in money being the end, I reckon our economy wouldn’t be collapsing like it does.

Cindy D

And Dave, at that time I had moved from being an Anarchist into being a liberal. I was still a snob, no matter how “generous” my thoughts were toward my “fellow” people.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad/com Roger Nowosielski

Cindy/Dave

One thing I never was, Cindi – a snob. Always had friends in high and low places – rubbing elbows, if you will, with hoi poloi.

Dave, I checked by the way the Octavo Press website. How do I go about making a submission? It’s not immediately apparent.

Cindy, did you like the little part you read? What do you think?

Roger

Cindy D

Roger,

I always tried to make the employees lives better at our business. I fought for their raises and for them to have some self-determination in their scheduling and the number and amounts of their breaks.

I became the manager of our packaging department. I proved that it was better to let them design their day. They had more fun. They were happier.

Now I own the company. We have two employees left. I give them everything I can afford. They run the place the way they want. I do the bookkeeping and make the larger business decisions as well as partake in the grunt work now. They tell me what they need me to do.

Cindy D

Always had friends in high and low places…

Me too. I was still a snob. Just a very nice and loving snob.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

You wouldn’t believe it if I told you what I was doing: running a newspaper distribution company and an advertising agency of sorts. Guess who my employees were: the guys from a skid row, San Francisco. There were good old times – I was approaching once half a million in gross income – four to five vans working 6-7 days a week and up to thirty or more employees – paper carriers. But then, apart from the divorce and Loma Prieta in 89, the market had changed. Lots of local newspapers, supermarkets, and pharmacies were being absorbed by larger chains, so the basis of the business started to dwindle. Once, I used to have as many as 150 more or less revolving accounts. Besides, with the advent of welfare – General Assistance (GA) in particular, the guys, apart from getting older, were getting lazy. Eventually the labor pool got depleted and the Mexicans took it over and started underbidding at next-to-ridiculous rates. And then the price of gas. But it was fun while it lasted. And no, I haven’t saved any for a rainy day. Was living off my cash flow.

Roger

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Honda Element – the only car you can flush.

Dave

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Dave, I checked by the way the Octavo Press website. How do I go about making a submission? It’s not immediately apparent.

The reason the site doesn’t have that info is that I’m not entirely ready to launch. But if there are authors crying for the service then that would push me that much closer to doing the necessary work. Email me a sample of what you’re looking to publish and let me contemplate.

Dave

Cindy D

Roger,

About your story. The writing I love. The content, I’ll need some time to think about it.

Cindy D

LOL Dave.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

I would send you a brief synopsis – 3-4 pages – but I don’t want to do this on the air.

What’s LOL, by the way?

Roger

Cindy D

Roger,

So you rubbed elbows with the skid-row guys–your employees.

…the guys, apart from getting older, were getting lazy.

They gave up their well-paying jobs for public assistance?

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Dave,

How about a synopsis and a chapter perhaps? Shall I use the email associated with your name at Blogcritics?

Sometimes it’s actually there. An Anarchist is in charge of solving the problems of bugs and things. Not a great choice

Anyway my email is there.

Cindy D

Sorry Roger, I thought you were talking to me about your book. Never the less have a look around Znet if you haven’t ever. There are a lot of interesting people there.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Not really, Cindy! The “jobs” weren’t that well-paying, but some could make up to a $100 a day, all under the table, by the way. They were “independent contractors” so to speak. That was a lot of money considering that many of them were “bums” (I don’t mean it in a derogatory way), beset by drug- alcohol problems, etc. I was “a community,” you might say. Many times, I would pay them at week’s end at a bar, believe it or not, and mostly in cash. What a grand time!
We all had fun.

Cindy D

Chomsky is there Roger. His wife just died though. He’s not been on recently.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

I was talking about my book!

Cindy D

Lazy bums. Is there another kind?

Yes, I can see you’re no snob

Cindy D

Yes, you’re book. However, I answered a question you addressed to Dave.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

So shall I email you the synopsis?

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

By the way, Cindy, I had come up from within the ranks. When I first came to SF in a VW and $20.00 in my pocket, I was a paper-carrier at first and a soda jerk at Ghirardelli Square. Then, I became a driver for that same distribution company. Eventually, I got some accounts of my own and started the business. So all these people I knew intimately and personally. It was like having an instant tap into the existing labor pool. The rest was easy.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Send me a synopsis and a chapter if you have both, Roger.

Dave

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Thanks, Dave

Roger

Cindy D

Roger,

LOL is “laughing out loud”

ROFLOL is “rolling on the floor laughing out loud”

Sure, send it. I am enjoying your writing style.

Cindy D

Ah I see, I was wrong about being wrong.

“I never say what I mean. But, then I never mean what I say.”

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Dave,

I just sent you that email. I’m not sure, however, that it went through. I got a “Daemon Notice,” so I don’t know.
Roger

Cindy D

Roger,

Try his form at his website. His e-mail never seems to work from here.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Will do!

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

I just sent you one at the specified site – to your attention. I sent it as attachment and I hope you’ll get it. I can’t do this, however, with Dave’s form, which allows only for a short message. So I’ll just wait until he gets back to me so we can straighten this out.
Roger

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Dave –

I really hate sounding like a juvenile “me-too-ist”, but could I also send you a synopsis and first chapter? I must admit I feel like the poor desperate sop the Beatles sang about in “Paperback Writer”….

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

There seems to be a problem, Glenn. His email associated with Blogcritics doesn’t seem to work. And by the way, welcome to the club.
Roger

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Send it on, Glenn. For all of you, the email associated with the BC politics section DOES work. The box just gets full sometimes. If you get a bounce message, send it again.

The year 2008 saw the hype fall away from virtual worlds but in contrast social networks are going from strength to strength and are being increasingly used as protest vehicles around the world. While the utility of Facebook and Twitter (using the #griot descriptor to report on the riots in Greece) have been widely reported upon some of the more interesting and interactive information can still be found in Second Life, which bodes well for the future of virtual worlds. Full report and links relating to this phenomena over at the MetaSecurity blog. Whether it be web-forums, Facebook or Second Life, virtual communities will continue to be an increasingly important part of the National Security picture in 2009.

I have never been to Facebook or myspace or twitter. Imagine a prospective teacher who has a standard background check. If I wrote under my name, imagine whether I would be suitable to be around children? A person’s name in google for a background check. End of teaching career. Because Anarchism is a crime to people who don’t even know what it means.

Cindy D

That link above is the Counterterrorism Blog:

The first multi-expert blog dedicated solely to counterterrorism issues, serving as a gateway to the community for policymakers and serious researchers. Designed to provide realtime information about terrorism cases and policy developments.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Roger and Glenn, no emails seem to have gotten through. Try again using the link on the Politics front page. I cleared out the queue.

Dave

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Dave,

The problem with that link is that the form in the contact page won’t allow for any attachment.

Roger

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

No, I mean the link from the BC politics front page which ought to launch your mail program. Here, I’ll see if I can duplicate the link.

Dave

http://ex-conservative.blogspot.com Glenn Contrarian

Dave –

I think my synopsis and first chapter made it through. Hope it intrigues you.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Same here. This one seems to work.
Roger

Cindy D

Roger,

I didn’t get an email from you. Not with or without attachment.

Also, I read both chapters on your site and now I want to know what happens.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Dave,

OK, I’ll try again, but this last one wasn’t rejected.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Sorry, Dave. I thought the previous message was from you.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

I had sent the email to the website you gave me – to your attention. (see # 421). If you didn’t get it there, I’ll connect with you tomorrow and we’ll get it fixed. I’m too wasted now.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Roger, got your emails about your new article, but nothing else.

Cindy, didn’t you know Austin is the nexus of all anarchism? We produced those two idiots who got arrested in St. Paul this summer.

BTW, since you’re such a big anarchis at all, have you checked out my soul brothers at Bureaucrash? Of course, they’re the good kind of anarchists for the most part, but you might find them entertaining.

Dave

Cindy D

Dave,

Actually Dave I haven’t been an activist since college. I have one friend. We read and discuss. I follow the site Chomsky is on. That was about it.

I didn’t know that Anarchists were anywhere in any size. The Argentina factory occupations that Mark pointed out and the Greek revolt have inspired me. Now that I know there are other people.

But I do know about the RNC committees. It’s disturbing to find that people are spied on. It makes one afraid of connecting. Even if one is a “good”–your words.

Thanks for the link. You know them Dave?

I am surprised that that’s all you had to say about that post. I would think you would say something about suppression of freedom.

Cindy D

Roger,

I sent you an e-mail to the address on your site. That should work.

Cindy D

Dave,

Those Bureaucrashers are anarcho-Capitalists from what I can tell.

I guess that’s why you know them. They would have things in common with both you and I.

Not my cup of tea though.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Dave/Cindy,

I just re-sent you an email with attachment(s) to an address that should work. Please let me know via “the reply” whether you got it.

Roger

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Dave,

Did you get my e-mail today, with attachments?

Roger

STM

Cindy,

I have a garden ornmament I have called Gnome Chompsky … one of those little plaster gnome guys with a silly hat, painted on breeches, a pipe and big teeth.

He looks more like our former Prime Minister, John Howard, than the actual Chomsky.

Just before the last election, our dog peed on him.

I knew it was an omen, and a good one …

STM

J.W. Howard … think G.W. Bush without the 10-gallon hat (please, no jokes about 2-pint heads), about three feet shorter, follically challenged (but not around the eyebrows), and big-glasses.

Cindy D

I see Stan,

Well, so much for the insight of the criminal progeny. Your dog, I mean…

…of course.

Cindy D

Dismissing people, out of hand, who take the time to go to source documents for their positions pisses me off a bit.

Yes, as I said, the GOOD kind of anarchists. And they have a great capitalist deal going with their fine selection of amusing t-shirts too.

Dave

Cindy D

Good for them Dave. Protecting the Coca Cola Company’s (or Pepsi’s, I don’t recall) right to put Plus for added vitamins. Inspiring.

At least you like freedom enough not to differentiate good and bad between militant protesters and people who’s activity includes writing to President Bush to give him a piece of their mind.

That you despise all non-Capitalists equally and seem to disclaim their ideology rather than their protest is heartening.

Cindy D

At least I won’t be worried that you have my last name.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

That’s funny, Cindy. He’d never stoop so low.

Cindy D

Les,

Thanks for that article. It was informative. Then I got to the Lenin quote. That scared me.

I still can’t figure out what the “law of value” actually means. Wikipedia isn’t even a help.

Recently the biggest customer of a distributor of our product asked for a price decrease on behalf of Agfa. It is unprecedented. Never has a corporate giant asked us for a lower price (than was initially negotiated). Agfa can’t afford to pay.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Cindy, I wouldn’t be surprised if Agfa has fallen on hard times. Of all the companies I did business with when I was in traditional publishing they’ve been the least successful at adapting to contemporary technology. Out of curiosity, what do you do that you have Agfa as a major supplier?

And yes, I’m all for protest. Protest of all kinds is good. It’s fun and educational too. Just don’t expect me to stand around holding a sign. I’ll find other ways to express my dissatisfaction.

BTW, why would you care if I had your last name? Is it magical? Is it Rumpelstiltskin?

Dave

Les Slater

Cindy,

“I still can’t figure out what the ‘law of value’ actually means.”

Substituting ‘the operation of the market’ will get you sufficiently close in the context it was used in that second to the last sentence.

Les

Cindy D

Dave,

We sell a chemical to print newspapers and make silk-screens, the old fashioned way, cheaply. Therefore, most of our business comes from outside the country where cheap is the salient variable. The computer to plate industry has been putting us under in the U.S. Our business is now increasing from the South and the East. Poor countries.

Good Dave. You support protest. I won’t worry about my name. Even a pacifist can be paranoid.

The history of Lenin’s revolution is the refutation of his theory. We will not successfully transcend the Capitalist State (and the crises inherent in capitalist production) by supporting a ‘revolutionary party’ to ‘take and hold’ its powers.

Mark Eden

(Thanks Chris. That looks better, but note that that whole 1st paragraph is a quote.)

Cindy D

Mark,

I forgot to tell you. I don’t have any photos of NY. My camera failed (should have read the instructions maybe :-).

If the organizer ever gets around to sending me the photos she took I’ll post them.

Mark Eden

Cindy, I keep stopping by to read your article. How goes the process?

Cindy D

The most interesting person I talked to was a fellow who came over to admonish us for supporting such a “small” problem. (Why didn’t we go and support something important.)

The few demonstrators were fun. Two had no idea what this demonstration was about. They had met the Anarchists in a bar and got drunk with them. They were in favor of any kind of revolution, so they showed up.

Empty bellies will change the nature of demonstrations. So long as Wendy’s can serve up a double cheeseburger for a buck is there really a need for a revolution?

Cindy, re your piece: I think you should wait for the guys to have time to get it edited/posted. I would think that they’ll get back to you shortly.

Cindy D

I haven’t sent it in. They never initially contacted me.

Cindy D

I filled out the form. I assume it’s too soon. I only did that Thurs? I think.

Cindy D

I have been troubled by police brutality at peaceful demonstrations.

Just threw that out there, it’s on my mind a lot.

BTW, I’m going to a 3 hour forum discussion on the Greek revolt. In Philly Jan 8. I’ll let you know what happens.

Mark Eden

I’ll just have to be patient. Sure hope it wasn’t a ‘timely’ piece.

Clavos

Empty bellies will change the nature of demonstrations. So long as Wendy’s can serve up a double cheeseburger for a buck is there really a need for a revolution?

Quoted for Truth*

*May Wendy’s and their ilk long prosper…

Cindy D

No, not timely. An look back.

Mark Eden

Until dissenters focus on activities akin to ‘making salt’ they are not likely to generate serious retaliation. (But you can figure that participants in demonstrations of solidarity have their pictures on file.)

Les Slater

Mark,

“The history of Lenin’s revolution is the refutation of his theory.”

That’s the opinion of anarchists, assorted other petit bourgeois leftist radicals and most of the reactionary right. The fact however is that the Stalinist counterrevolution was not Leninist, communist or Marxist. The theoretical ‘contributions’ of Bukharin, socialism in one country, market socialism, etc. embraced by Stalin are what lead the Soviet Union in the direction that it went.

Lenin never thought that a socialist revolution would be successful without the workers in more advanced capitalist countries like Germany taking power and coming to their aid. That is why the Third International was formed. This international was abandoned in spirit and then formally by Stalin.

Les

Cindy D

There have been mass arrests. felony charges–for dancing (It apparently “incited” the crowd). Amy Goodman was arrested. IVAW were trampled by horses. An practically unconscious vet was denied medical help. People held down and having tear gas sprayed multiple times in the face. With no resistance.

Completely peaceful demonstrations (dancing and sitting in a park–not really even demonstrating), huge ones. Even where many people at the park were there for a different reason. A guy sleeping on a bench–gets arrested.

Terrorist = $1000 worth of property damage.

Enough graffiti = terrorism.

Cindy D

I don’t care about a photo in a file–unlinked with my name.

I’m only worried about a background check. If I didn’t want to teach I wouldn’t care at all.

Lenin stood for state capitalism and argued that socialist democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person. Was Lenin a Marxist?

snip

In power the Bolsheviks proliferated the wages system making it an accepted feature of Russian life. Wage differentials, too, were frequently greater than those obtaining in western society. Surplus value, from which the capitalist class derives its income in the form of profit, rent and interest became the basis of the bloated lifestyles of the bureaucracy. A contrasting feature of state-capitalism and “private” capitalism is that, in the latter, the beneficiaries of the exploitation of labour derive their wealth and privilege from the direct ownership of capital whereas, in the former, wealth and privilege were the benefits of political power.

Cindy D

(wonders what Les is telling the Republic workers)

Mark Eden

Les, you make my point. My read on all ‘revolutions’ that have claimed to be Marxist/Leninist is that they fail to transcend the market. There’s always some reason to fall back into capitalism. Why should the one that you propose be different? ‘Party’ is not the negation of capitalist state structure from which a ‘third term’ will develop. (And as a proud member of the petit bourgeoisie it is only proper that I hold this view.)

Cindy, I was thinking more about head cracking and numerous injuries when I wrote ‘serious retaliation’.

Cindy D

Yeah, Mark, but it is the act of terrorizing people that prevents dissent. That is my concern. The move toward repressing even peaceful protest = less people to protest.

Cindy D

I’ll just buy a gas mask.

Mark Eden

Don’t forget the hard hat.

http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/ Roger Nowosielski

Cindy,

I took the liberty to e-mail you another excerpt. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Roger

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

Cindy:

Our esteemed boss, Eric Olsen, is waiting on your email address and user name so he can set up your account. Can you contact him using the link in the upper right corner of this page?

I’m eager to see your article.

Dave

Cindy D

Dave I did, I think Thursday. Okay I’ll try again.

Ti ringrazio.

Cindy D

o i c…

Cindy D

Les,

In case you come by. There are some things I was wondering about. So, I am putting this thread to active.

Cindy D

Les,

duplicate of my last post. Good night.

http://www.fontcraft.com/rod/ Dave Nalle

I’m only worried about a background check. If I didn’t want to teach I wouldn’t care at all.

Hell, if you want to teach in Austin you should put your photo in a protest on the front page of your resume. They’ll hire you in a second.

Wow – now that’s what I call a story. Your comment on one of my articles (a point very well taken by the way), in combination with your own name — “Dr. Dreadful” — peaked my curiosity about you – and ironically led me to your December article about poor little Adolf Hitler Campbell. Boy, the world is so sad and weird sometimes. On the plus side, you are an excellent writer and you certainly made me think a lot about the rights of the named and the namers out there. Thanks for getting my mental juices flowing again today. I look forward to reading more of your articles. Nice job.

http://drdreadful.blogspot.com Dr Dreadful

Thanks for your kind words, Legna!

Karl Gharst

Let White Supremacy be What White Supremacy Is
The old tactics – telling lies and calling names has really worked in the past for the “sons of Hell” in their quest for the destruction of God’s Holy Seed upon the Earth. Well, we know what works for us, too! It is the truth that sustains the righteous in our World.
So, let us put our racial theories to practice, shall we?
White Supremacy: Name the race of people that have accomplished more – or even as much as the white peoples of the Earth. What race of people would you be better off living with if good white people decided that you were no longer welcome in our God-given land! (Pick well, because the separation of the races is a fact that is happening right now and those who only spite us and curse us are not going to be among us much longer!) What other race of people would you feel more comfortable piloting the next airplane on you fly on? Whose medicine do you reach for when you are sick? Whose Laws and whose Justice do you seek and you find yourself innocent and in a courtroom? Whose kindness do you look for when you are in trouble and who would you rather have defend you when you are being treated poorly?
Now for those who have been honest so far – we have many problems that maybe you white supremists can help us with?
Perhaps you’ve noticed it is this same God-given kindness we are known for that has been exploited in the last few generations or so with the inundation of all the other peoples of the world into the homelands, ancient or otherwise, that were once exclusively for White Christendom. These are our hate-crazed, mentally ill, Baal-worshipping, Talmudic Rabbis who we first (mistakenly) let live among us a few hundred years ago that have socially engineered this “death by genetic flood” we are facing today! Their belief comes right from the foot of the Tower of Babel, itself, “… The people seek to make themselves one, now, of all they seek to do what then shall be kept from them …?”
We also know that the nonwhite peoples of the Earth have only come to live with us because of their great faith in “white supremacy,” despite the rabbis worst intentions. We know no one ever asked to be born, so we don’t hold anything against you because you exist – we only ask that you allow us a place on the Earth to exist – a place where white people can call home? If you can see this far thru the smoke and dust the Rabbis have kicked up – we (the ones who the Rabbis are calling “white supremists”) will see to it that you have a place called home and a right to defend yourself. If you have faith in Jesus Christ and can agree to obey His good laws – you will never have a greater friend on this planet than your White Christian friend! Because…
For those who say the Earth is not big enough for white people to live here, too – I say let this kindness once afforded to you be withdrawn! I say let those curses you’ve called upon us now come raining down upon your head! I say let your homes be broken in and your strong men bound and your daughters ravished. Let the plagues of Egypt be upon you and your bodies boil over with the sores of Job! You who leer and at our daughters and you who misuse our sons and lay your hands grievously upon His priests, “let these death angels you have summoned for us now come among you and gather their harvest!”
You know, the Rabbis lied to their own people, too! They knew they weren’t these people called Israel – (but then “rolling up balls of mud into godless, mindless, soulless ‘mud-people’ to do the Rabbis’ bidding is what the Talmud is all about so it shouldn’t surprise anyone when we find them doing it! See; golem)
The Rabbis plan on taking off with all their wealth to somewhere like Barbados in the last days – leaving the better but poorer Jews behind to take the brunt of the punishment for their great crimes – just like they did in Germany and just like they did in Haiti 212 years ago.
I will tell you “that they will be making Rabbis into ‘Rib-eyes’ in Barbados on His day!” Karl Gharst